Polyneoptera

The cohort Polyneoptera is one of the major groups of winged insects, comprising the Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, etc.) and all other neopteran insects believed to be more closely related to Orthoptera than to any other insect orders. They were formerly grouped together with the Palaeoptera and Paraneoptera as the Hemimetabola or Exopterygota on the grounds that they have no pupa, the wings gradually developing externally throughout the nymphal stages. Many members of the group have leathery forewings (tegmina) and hindwings with an enlarged anal field (vannus).

When Carl Linnaeus started applying binomial names to animals in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758, there were few animals included in the scheme, and consequently few groups. As more and more new species were discovered and differences recognised, the original groups proposed by Linnaeus were split up.

Originally all polyneopteran insects were in the genus Gryllus, this genus now contains a group of closely related crickets. In the scheme used by Linnaeus the genus contained crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, katydids / bush crickets (Tettigoniidae), stick insects, and praying mantises. These groups, along with the cockroaches, which Linnaeus did treat differently, are all orthopteroid insects. The newly discovered order Mantophasmatodea is also an orthopteroid order.