{"id":1873,"date":"2016-09-15T15:01:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T20:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2017-03-09T20:50:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:50:01","slug":"praying-mantis-encore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/praying-mantis-encore\/","title":{"rendered":"Praying Mantis Encore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy, BugFans,<\/p>\n

Every fall, the BugLady gets emails from people who are excited about finding their first Praying mantis, and who can blame them? The large and charismatic Praying mantis is a rock star of the insect world. What follows is a massively rewritten version of a BOTW from 2007. <\/p>\n

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A few summers ago, the BugLady got a phone call from a woman whose daughter was doing a project on Praying mantises. She had phoned an \u201cexpert,\u201d who told her that the PM is an invasive insect. So, this BOTW starts with an aside: <\/p>\n

\nAside:<\/strong> There are a number of words that people use interchangeably to describe the status of certain plants and animals—alien, exotic, non-native, introduced, and invasive. The first four mean (more-or-less) the same thing—that, whether accidentally or intentionally introduced, whether from another continent or another part of this continent, an organism is not from around here. Apple trees, earthworms (here in God\u2019s Country), Swamp darners, alfalfa, Asian ladybugs, chicory, honeybees, Helleborine orchids, rusty crayfish, Norway maples—not native to southeastern Wisconsin. \u201cInvasive\u201d means that, native or not, an organism\u2019s population grows large enough to have a negative impact on the community it occurs in. Praying mantises in Wisconsin are introduced, etc., but they are not invasive.<\/div>\n

 
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Praying Mantis<\/h3>\n

Most contemporary field guides put mantises in their own order, Mantodea, but older insect books group them with the grasshoppers (Orthoptera) (they\u2019re not related to walking sticks, either), and newer books (cutting-edge science, here) will put the Mantises (despite their predatory adaptations) with termites and cockroaches in an order called Dictyoptera. Bugguide.net<\/a> notes that mantises \u201ccan reasonably be described as \u2018predatory roaches.\u2019\u201d The Greek word for them, Mantis<\/em> or Mantes<\/em>, is variously translated as prophet, soothsayer, and diviner (the Greeks believed mantises have supernatural powers). Their common name causes confusion, but it\u2019s PrAying mantis, because of their reverent posture, not PrEying mantis, for their eating habits. <\/p>\n

The BugLady cannot speak to their religious proclivities, but they are superbly adapted as predators. The serrations\/spines on the second and third sections of their abnormally long front legs interlock when they grab their prey, making escape impossible. Their eyes are situated so as to afford them binocular vision; like hawks and owls they can see forward with both eyes and can judge the distance to their prey. Like owls, they can rotate their heads significantly (but not like a corkscrew) (neither can owls), the only insects that are able to do so. <\/p>\n

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Mantises rely on camouflage and stealth to ambush their prey (there\u2019s a pink Malaysian mantis that blends into tropical orchids, and there are some mantis species that chase their prey like tiger beetles do). The BugLady found a mantis in New Jersey once that was blending into a pickerelweed. She kept looking at the plant, thinking, \u201cWait—pickerel weed doesn\u2019t have any parts where that plant has parts.\u201d <\/p>\n

According to Elizabeth Lawlor in the wonderful Discover Nature around the House<\/em>, when an insect is beyond a mantis\u2019s considerable reach, the mantis engages in a slow, swaying dance, making eye contact with its proposed meal, edging forward as it sways, until it is suddenly close enough. It targets insects, spiders and other invertebrates, but tropical mantises have been observed holding hummingbirds, small snakes, bats, and baby mice. Fellow mantises are fair game—hatchlings are advised to move away from the egg case hastily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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PMs are visual hunters and therefore daytime feeders, but males may fly at night, tracking female pheromones. A single ear, located on the thorax, helps them detect bats. <\/p>\n

Females are famous for eating their mates in the heat of the moment, as we saw on that memorable \u201cBuffy the Vampire Slayer\u201d episode, but this behavior is reported much less often in the wild than it is in caged pairs, where the male can\u2019t escape after mating. After decapitation, the beat goes on, and she gets a protein boost. <\/p>\n

She lays as many as 200 eggs in an egg case called an ootheca<\/em><\/a> (today\u2019s vocabulary word) that is at first foamy, and then brittle, and that looks like dried shaving cream, and she dies soon afterward. Check out Lawlor\u2019s book for a description of the development and \u201cbirth\u201d of the young mantises. Cutest! Nymphs! Ever! Cuter than Pandas! <\/p>\n