# Ootheca attacked by ants



## swoosh (Aug 10, 2007)

Hello,

Have you guys had an experienced of ootheca being attacked by ants?

If not, then what is the possibility of being attack and how we can prevent it?

Thanks


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## Djoul (Aug 10, 2007)

hello  Your ooth was attacked by ants ? Or did you find in the nature the ooth ?

If it is in the nature, maybe it was open by a predator and then the ants arrived to clean up the place :lol: 

If it is in your own breeding, I do not know, but if it is the case you can prevent it very easily.

Friendly

Julien


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## swoosh (Aug 10, 2007)

Thanks Djoul

Actually my friend sent me a couple of ooths then when I opened the box I saw an ooth swarming with ants and the other ooths with 5 to 10 ants getting in and out of the ootheca. I immediately removed the invaded ooth from the others. Then removed as many as I can in the remaining ooths. I tried to hang them hoping that some of them will still hatch.  

Maybe the ooth died in transit then the ants invade the ootheca in the post office.

Die Ants!


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## Kriss (Aug 10, 2007)

Did the ants have little wings?


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## Ben.M (Aug 10, 2007)

Could they possibly be paracidic wasps, it i not rare for wild caught ooth to contain these :roll:


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## Ben.M (Aug 10, 2007)

This is a paracitic wasp,






Sooooooooooo, do they look like that


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## hibiscusmile (Aug 10, 2007)

yea, I just had a bunch of them hatch , they drilled tiny little holes to let themselves out of the Ooth. They took almost a week and a half to hatch, they just keep coming :arrow:


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## Hypoponera (Aug 11, 2007)

That's nothing! I had wasps emerging for over at least 5 weeks. This spring, I found a wild _Stegmomantis limbata_ ooth. It already had several wasp exit holes on the sides. I incubated the ooth for 3 weeks and 20 mantid nymphs emerged. I kept the ooth in incubation for another week just in case of stragglers. After that, the ooth was placed in the mantid collection case which contains mothballs. A week later, I opened the case and found 2 wasps had died while trying to exit the ooth! So my pinned mantid collection now contains samples of the parasitic wasps! No wasps emerged while the ooth was in incubation though.


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## hibiscusmile (Aug 12, 2007)

I did not get any mantis, and I finally had to run it under boiling water to finish them off inside. By the way thanks for the pic of the wasp, I was going to google for it to make sure of what they were and your pic was great.


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## yen_saw (Aug 13, 2007)

Yeah i hated it too when wild collected ooth hatched out parasitic wasps





but i would just keep the ooth separately in a seal container (to avoid these wasps from attacking other incubating ooth) instead of boiling the infested ooth because some of the eggs that dodged the wasps attack will still hatch, parasitic wasps hatch out earlier than mantis nymph, but i have oothecae infested by wasps and still managed to hatch in later days. In fact i have seen some late wasps hatcher being devoured by the mantis hatchling. There was a pic from a German site showing the pic of a mantis eating a parasitic wasp... revenge!!


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## hibiscusmile (Aug 13, 2007)

:mrgreen: Great, just great Yen!


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## OGIGA (Aug 14, 2007)

> In fact i have seen some late wasps hatcher being devoured by the mantis hatchling.


Awesome! Muahaha! Mantis wins!


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## Ian (Aug 14, 2007)

Ah yes, those parasitic wasps are a bugger! Never seen ants attack though...


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## yen_saw (Aug 14, 2007)

Ah think i found the link, see last pic (Nov 2005) where a mantis is eating a wasp develope from the same oothecae. There are some interesting pics in this site too.

http://www.mantodea.info/cms/index.php?id=36&amp;L=1


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## pizzuti (Aug 16, 2007)

When I was a kid I thought one of my ooths was being invaded by ants. They turned out to be baby mantids.

They should be able to naturally defend themselves from ants outside, because in the wild they live among ands and continue to survive as a species. But if you're really worried, you could always keep them in a (ventilated) jar or cage outside.


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## asdsdf (Aug 16, 2007)

In the wild, ooths are only found in winter, usually, and ants are usually dead or not active in the winter, so, that's their natural defensive.


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## Hypoponera (Aug 20, 2007)

I don't think cold weather would be of much value against ants. If it were too cold for the ants, the female mantid would also be dead! Ants can handle adverse temps far better then mantids. Chances are that the egg case contains an ant repelent. Paper wasps do use a repelent on the pedicle of the nest.


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## Krissim Klaw (Aug 20, 2007)

> When I was a kid I thought one of my ooths was being invaded by ants. They turned out to be baby mantids.


That was the exact same thing I thought when I was a kid and my first ooth hatched. :lol:


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## asdsdf (Aug 20, 2007)

but but but!!!! Almost all of the ants die in the winter except for the queen ant (Not from the cold, it's just the cycle)!!! Plus, the female does die, for your info. They don't neccessarily lay the ooth in winter.


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## Hypoponera (Aug 21, 2007)

Actually, the vast majority of the worker ant population survives winter with no problem. The queen of most species will not tend brood or feed herself once the first brood has developed. So for the colony to survive, workers must also. The entire colony tends to move very deep into the ground and slow down during winter. They will get active on the surface if there are a couple warm days.

True, the female mantid does not deposit the ooth in the winter. In fact, our local species are laying right now! The point was that the ants are very active while the ooth is being made. Thus, the winter cold is not an effective ant deterent.


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## asdsdf (Aug 21, 2007)

Oops, ya acutally, they do hibernate  But if they hibernate, then your theory of "the cold weather won't affect them" is wrong, since they aren't moving about looking for ooths.  So, if the ants are nibernating, the ooths are safe. :twisted: lol. That's their "natural" def.


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## Hypoponera (Aug 21, 2007)

I think you missed my point. It is 99 F today. A native _Stegmomantis limbata_ female is depositing an ooth right now. Within 10 feet of the mantid are several colonies of different ant species that are active. The ants will remain active until early November. They will also become active in Jan if temps climb over 35 F. And yet, the mantid ooth will remain untouched by the ants. So what keeps the ants away from the ooth right now? Certainly not the cold!


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## asdsdf (Aug 21, 2007)

Fine Fine, you win for now, but....I'm sure that if you put the ooth in the middle of the ants, they will try to get inside and eat the eggs.


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## swoosh (Aug 23, 2007)

Thanks a lot guys.

I think asdsdf is right. I think the package was near the running ants so they tried to attack the ooths.


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