Texas country music legends Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker were bestowed a different kind of honor this month, when two new species of grasshoppers were named after them.
The flightless grasshoppers, called Melanoplus nelsoni and Melanoplus walkeri, were discovered by a research team in Central Texas. The study, “Diversification deep in the heart of Texas,” was published in the scientific journal ZooKeys.
The researchers were inspired by long car trips listening to country music.
“We’d all be loaded up in the truck. And in Texas, there’s a lot of roads and a lot of time in the car between sites,” said team leader JoVonn Hill, an assistant research professor at Mississippi State University and director of the Mississippi Entomological Museum. “So, of course, you bring your music and when you’re in Texas, you gotta listen to Texas music. I thought it would be a cool way to honor them for their contributions, but also just the joy they brought us.”
The two species were among seven new grasshoppers identified by Hill and his team. Six come from the Edwards Plateau, an area of “extraordinary diversity of life,” according to the environmental group, The Nature Conservancy.
Willie Nelson, who turned 90 in April, reinvented his career in Austin, just east of the Edwards Plateau. Three years after moving to the Texas capital, he released the seminal 1975 album Red Headed Stranger. He had recorded it in Garland, a 90-mile drive from his hometown of Abbott.
The region also has a close connection to Walker, who recorded his 1973 album Viva Terlingua! in the small town of Luckenbach. Last year, the town honored Walker, who died in 2020, with a bronze statue of him with town owner and self-proclaimed mayor Hondo Crouch. Hill’s team also stopped in Luckenbach, collecting grasshoppers there.
Remembering his time in Luckenbach, Hill said: “I looked up and there’s seven or eight people standing on the porch. They’re looking out watching these two guys with insect nets run around chasing grasshoppers. It’s a small community, so for a day, we got to say we were the talk of the town.”
Hill’s interest in grasshoppers started as an undergraduate at Mississippi State University. As he neared graduation, a mentor asked if he was considering grad school. Having no other plans, Hill stuck around for a master’s degree and then a Ph.D. He’s now chasing grasshoppers across the United States.
“Catching grasshoppers is a lot of fun,” Hill says. “All you need is a net and you’re just walking around, making them jump up out of the grass, flushing them out. Just like you’re quail hunting. Then you snag them with your net and it takes some skill … but that’s literally all it is.”
