The thoracic morphology of the wingless dune cricket Comicus calcaris (Orthoptera: Schizodactylidae): Novel apomorphic characters for the group and adaptations to sand desert environments

Schizodactylidae, splay-footed or dune crickets, represents a distinct lineage among the highly diverse orthopteran subgroup Ensifera (crickets, katydids and allies). Only two extant genera belong to the Schizodactylidae: the winged Eurasian genus Schizodactylus, whose ecology and morphology is well documented, and the wingless South African Comicus, for which hardly any studies providing morphological descriptions have been conducted since its...