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New data on distribution, ecology and biology of the rare extant species Paracyphoderris erebeus of the almost completely ancient family Prophalangopsidae (Orthoptera) are given. This montane species prefers humid areas with relatively low summer temperatures. Habits, mating behaviour and life history of P. erebeus are extremely similar to those of the North American representatives of the genus Cyphoderris. Nowadays, the Amurian grig is known from the Myaochan, Badzhalsky, Dusse-Alin, Bureinsky and Aezop ridges in the Khabarovsk Territory (north of the Amur River) and Bydyr Mountain in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia only. The analysis of the predicted distribution of P. erebeus based on the occurrence data reveals that the populations of the species may be more widely distributed over the southern part of the Russian Far East, at least up to 56° N. The ecologo-geographic model of the species distribution over its range is generated using the Maxent 3.4.4 software for the first time. Modelling of the P. erebeus distribution for 2021–2040 and 2041–2060 shows that the position of the species range appears to be relatively stable but a weak decline in the foretold suitability during climate warming may result in a reduction in population sizes and the subsequent fragmentation of the species population system. In this case, the Amurian grig will become a prospective to be included on the IUCN Red List.

Whole mitogenomes are a useful data source for a wide variety of research goals due to the vastly cheaper sequencing cost and the far less demanding high-quality templates. The mitogenome has demonstrated great potential in resolving phylogenetic questions in Orthoptera at different taxonomic scales as well as exploring patterns of molecular and morphological character evolutions. In this study, the complete mitogenome of Alulacrisshilinensis (Zheng, 1977) was sequenced using next-generation sequencing, the characteristics of the mitogenome are presented briefly, and the phylogeny of the Melanoplinae and Catantopinae was reconstructed using a selected dataset of mitogenome sequences under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference frameworks. The results show that the genus was consistently assigned to the subfamily Melanoplinae rather than Catantopinae in all phylogenetic trees deduced from different datasets under different frameworks, and this finding is entirely consistent with its morphological characters. Therefore, it is more appropriate to place the genus Alulacris in Melanoplinae rather than in Catantopinae.