Museum specimens of two species of mole crickets, Gryllotalpa tali Broza and Gryllotalpa marismortui Broza, from Israel were washed with pentane to remove cuticular hydrocarbons still remaining on the cuticle. The hydrocarbons were separated by gas chromatography into 116 peaks. The two species qualitatively had the same hydrocarbon compounds on the cuticle, but there were consistent quantitative differences in amounts of the different hydrocarbons. Canonical discrimination analysis separated G. marismortui, which lives at the edge of springs near the shoreline of the Dead Sea from G. tali. The G. tali crickets were collected from different regions of Israel, and clustered into three separate groups. One group was composed of individuals from type locality and adjacent places in northern Israel. The second group was composed of individuals from a population within Jericho and East Jerusalem; this population geographically borders the Dead Sea, the habitat of G. marismortui. The third group was from the red sand (Orto-Hamra) soil habitat south of Haifa. The proportion of hydrocarbon chains n -C27 n -C28 in G. marismortui may serve as a taxonomic marker to distinguish this species from G. tali. Hydrocarbon analysis is a useful tool that supports morphological, chromosomal and male song analysis in the division of this Gryllotalpa complex into two species.