Taxonomists agree that crickets are a monophyletic group, that
is, they constitute all the surviving descendents of a single
ancestral species. However, taxonomists disagree as to where in
the taxonomic hierarchy this group belongs and how it should be
subdivided. For example, Vickery and Kevan (1985) put crickets
in the suborder Gryllodea of the order Grylloptera, whereas we
along with many others put them in the superfamily Grylloidea of
the suborder Ensifera, order Orthoptera. In our scheme, the
initial subdivisions are families, and we recognize only two:
Gryllotalpidae, the mole crickets, and Gryllidae, all other
crickets. We treat as subfamilies some cricket groups that
others treat as families-namely, tree crickets, scaly crickets,
ant crickets, and sword-tailed crickets. We do this because the
evolutionary relations of the major groups crickets are poorly
understood making it impossible to know what family
classification will best reveal phylogeny. It is worth noting
that Mogoplistinae (scaly crickets