Open Grasslands: Arthropods

Mammals

Birds

Amphibians/Reptiles

Plants

Bryophytes/Lichen

Monarch butterfly

This large orange and black butterfly feeds only on the milkweed plants that grow in moist meadows and ditches in the hot grasslands of the Southern Okanagan Basin. Orange and black are a sign of danger in the insect world: the monarch digests poisons from the milkweed, in turn making it poisonous to animals that might prey on it. Monarchs migrate south to Northern California to overwinter.

Grasshoppers

These jumping, singing insects are common throughout our grasslands. Keen eyesight and hearing along with powerful hind legs allow them to escape swiftly from predators. Feeding on the foliage of plants, grasshoppers were a plague in the 1930s and 1940s.

Scorpions

Pincer claws, eight legs and a long abdomen with a stinger on the end make scorpions easy to distinguish from other creatures crawling on the ground. Scorpions will only be found at night, though, searching for insects to eat.

Want to find out about species at risk in open grasslands?
Go to Species at Risk

Here are some other representative species in open grasslands:

Crickets & Grasshoppers:
Band-winged Grasshopper
Spur-throated Grasshopper
Bugs:
Leafhoppers (Cicadellidae)
Plant bugs (Miridae)
Plant hoppers (Delphacidae)
Seed bugs (Lygaeidae)
Beetles:
Carrion Beetle(Silphidae)
Ground Beetles (Carabidae)
Tiger Beetle (Carabidae)
Flies:
Beeflies (Bombyliidae)
Robber Flies (Asilidae)
Moths & Butterflies:
Monarch (Nymphalidae)
Swallowtail (Papilionidae)
Wasps, Ants & Bees:
Solitary bee ()
Velvet ants (Mutillidae)
Scorpions:
Northern Scorpion
Ticks:
Rocky Mountain Wood Tick (Ixodideae)

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