# Want to breed pink S. Californicas



## cloud jaguar (Oct 12, 2008)

My wildcaught S. Californica laid an ooth 10/5/08 which we are incubating. My local friends reported catching/seeing pink mantids, but until i caught a pink one a month ago, i did not believe it. Apparently these mostly hang out on flowers from what i have seen so the pink is great camo. It is a tannish pink color, but i read a string on here about the red/pink actually being from green. Also, my wife, a photographer, said green and hot pink were color opposites - this makes sense to me since the pink one had green inner legs and the green ones have pink inner legs.

How can we breed the nymphs to be predominantly pink? Our idea is to put a pink background in there with fake pink flowers inside -ALWAYS, especially when they molt. Is that enough?

~Arkanis


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## mrblue (Oct 12, 2008)

Arkanis said:


> How can we breed the nymphs to be predominantly pink?


no.


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## kamakiri (Oct 12, 2008)

I don't think you can. My suggestion would be to house as many as you can with pink, white, and red backgrounds in their enclosures.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

Arkanis said:


> How can we breed the nymphs to be predominantly pink?


You can do just about anything given enough time, dedication, and money. It's easy to do when only one or two genes are involved and only two alleles per gene are present in the population. This is common in dogs but I doubt insect color is going to be that easy.

S-


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## darkspeed (Oct 12, 2008)

Being that the color comes about in response to their environment, there is nothing genetic about it. You can keep and breed the species for several generations only selecting the ones that turn pink for breeding, and their off spring will still turn green under specific environmental conditions. Environmental based defense mechanisms are a whole lot different than spots on a dog.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED said:


> Being that the color comes about in response to their environment, there is nothing genetic about it.


I don't believe that is true. If you were to raise _Hierodula membranacea_ in an all purple environment, they are not going to turn purple. _Hymenopus coronatus_ is not going to turn yellow if you put it on yellow flowers. There is certainly a genetic component to mantid color.

Selective breeding has been proven to work for centuries. There is no reason to believe it would not work with mantids as well. Color, since it is expressed clearly, is an easy trait to breed for.

S-


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## Rick (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED said:


> Being that the color comes about in response to their environment, there is nothing genetic about it. You can keep and breed the species for several generations only selecting the ones that turn pink for breeding, and their off spring will still turn green under specific environmental conditions. Environmental based defense mechanisms are a whole lot different than spots on a dog.


I don't believe it is in repsonse to environment. I find green and brown mantids wild here within feet of each other.


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## darkspeed (Oct 12, 2008)

There was already a thread on this a while back where resident Mantid scientist Christian fully explained the phenom of mantis color change. Of course Hierodula membranacea isnt gonna change color because that isnt a trait of that particular species. However it has been noted in many other sp. such as Ghosts, Orchids, B. Mendica, and apparently S. Californica. However there are many different environmental triggers involved, and they vary from species to species. These can be humidity, temperature, background color, and light spectrum. That said, if all your female Ghosts turn green due to being kept in a humid enclosure, So why in the world would anyone expect their offspring to be green as well? Did the humidity alter the parent's DNA? No.... and if her offspring are then kept in a much drier environment the females will turn brown. When and why they change color is hardwired into the mantids DNA, and is completely independent of the parent's environmental experiences. What you are porposing is on the same level as saying that if my wife and I stay out in the sun all the time, and we both get really dark tans as a result, then we are then gonna have dark skinned children. It just doesnt work that way.


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## Rick (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED said:


> There was already a thread on this a while back where resident Mantid scientist Christian fully explained the phenom of mantis color change. Of course Hierodula membranacea isnt gonna change color because that isnt a trait of that particular species. However it has been noted in many other sp. such as Ghosts, Orchids, B. Mendica, and apparently S. Californica. However there are many different environmental triggers involved, and they vary from species to species. These can be humidity, temperature, background color, and light spectrum. That said, if all your female Ghosts turn green due to being kept in a humid enclosure, So why in the world would anyone expect their offspring to be green as well? Did the humidity alter the parent's DNA? No.... and if her offspring are then kept in a much drier environment the females will turn brown. When and why they change color is hardwired into the mantids DNA, and is completely independent of the parent's environmental experiences. What you are porposing is on the same level as saying that if my wife and I stay out in the sun all the time, and we both get really dark tans as a result, then we are then gonna have dark skinned children. It just doesnt work that way.


Wasn't saying it did work that way. However I also don't think you can breed for color. Mantids from the same ooth can be different colors.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED,

Genetics define what colors are possible. Genetics restricts the range of color change possible in species that do alter color due to environmental factors. If the breeder has enough information, it would be possible to breed for color given enough time. Through natural selection, species such as _Deroplatys dessicata_ came into being. If those radical changes can happen through natural selection, it would be foolish to think something much simpler could not be done on purpose.

And Rick, the fact that mantids from the same ooth can be different colors proves you could breed for certain colors.

S-


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## darkspeed (Oct 12, 2008)

Sounds like you got it all figured out. You and Arkanis get right on that then, and PM me in 20 million years to let me know how it turned out.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED said:


> Sounds like you got it all figured out. You and Arkanis get right on that then, and PM me in 20 million years to let me know how it turned out.


Well, based on your comments, I do appear to have more knowledge on the subject than you do. And it wouldn't take 20 millions years to breed for color. It didn't take 20 million years to breed flightless and wingless fruit flies.

As I intimated previously, this is harder to do with polygenic inheritance versus monogenic inheritance. But it is not out of the realm of possibility. The question I have is why would anyone want to make the effort to do this? We are not talking about a domesticated animal here that we want to change for a tangible reason.

S-


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## darkspeed (Oct 12, 2008)

Of course you do Sidewinder. Now go to the kitchen and get yourself a cookie for doing such a great job of pwning me. Cuz we arent talking about wings or no wings here, we are talking about a color change that occurs as a result of a certain environmental trigger. Considering we dont even know what that trigger is, and the fact that it takes almost a half a year at best to breed a single pair of mantids, instead of a few weeks as with fruit flies, I still say it would take a very long time. I mean it only took mother nature millions of years to engineer Deroplatys dessicata , but then again she isnt very good at the whole evolution thing anyway.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED said:


> Of course you do Sidewinder. Now go to the kitchen and get yourself a cookie for doing such a great job of pwning me. Cuz we arent talking about wings or no wings here, we are talking about a color change that occurs as a result of a certain environmental trigger. Considering we dont even know what that trigger is, and the fact that it takes almost a half a year at best to breed a single pair of mantids, instead of a few weeks as with fruit flies, I still say it would take a very long time. I mean it only took mother nature millions of years to engineer Deroplatys dessicata , but then again she isnt very good at the whole evolution thing anyway.


DARKSPEED,

If you wouldn't have talked smack you wouldn't have gotten any back.

The point is that the color potential of each mantid species is in their genes. It is not completely random or completely controlled by their environment. Some species will have a more complicated color genetic makeup than others. Let's take _Tenodera sinensis_ as an example here. This species shows up in adult form in a variety of shades of green, brown, and sometime a little of both. If you spent time breeding green _T. sinensis_ to green _T. sinensis_ and if you used test breeding to eliminate green _T. sinensis_ from the breeding pool that produced too many brown _T. sinensis_, you could reduce the brown phenotype considerably and possibly eliminate it.

Now, all that would be impossible if the genes responsible for color allow both colors to be expressed based on some environmental condition. That is not likely the case since _Tenodera sinensis_ raised in the exact same conditions express different colors.

Clearly there are many unknown factors here. But this is not out of the realm of possibility. Man has done some amazing things using selective breeding. The principles that apply to chordates also apply to invertebrates.

S-


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

The bottom line here is that no one is going to do this. It's possible to accomplish but it would require to much study and effort for no practical gain.

S-


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## yeatzee (Oct 12, 2008)

Pic request of the pink stagmomantis  

I breed em, but have never seen a pink one &lt;_&lt; 

My females are currently tan/beish, brown, green, and like an artificial dye green. No pink


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## darkspeed (Oct 12, 2008)

sidewinder said:


> If you wouldn't have talked smack you wouldn't have gotten any back.


Yes but I can take it. Regardless of whether you are a college geneticist or just happened to pay extra close attention in 9th grade biology, your optimism in controlled selection does not have me convinced.


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## sidewinder (Oct 12, 2008)

DARKSPEED,

Do just a little bit of research into the results of selective breeding in the past 500 years and I think you will be surprised at what has been accomplished with domesticated animals. Much of that quite a bit less trivial that selecting for color.

If there were a critical agricultural need for always green _Tenodera sinensis_, and there were big money to be made, someone would get it done.

S-


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## cloud jaguar (Oct 13, 2008)

Yeatzee, here is a pic of a green one i have and the pink one i found but let go. It is a crappy picture since the digital had only autofocus. It looked pinkish-khaki with bright green parts on the inner legs. Basically, it was pefectly camoflaged against the outer petals of the pink flower in the background of the pic with the green mantis.

Also, lol, i am no geneticist or anything and new to mantids - basically i read that if you raise these in a color deprived environment they can be bright colored variants. I would like to do that if possible, not breed a new species!

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff60/12...o1mantid033.jpg

Above is a green mantid from my yard.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff60/12...o1mantid035.jpg

Above is the pink mantid from my yard.


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## sidewinder (Oct 13, 2008)

Arkanis,

I suspect that pink male is really a brown male with some reddish hues. I have seen quite a few of those in southern California. But pink is not a color I have personally seen.

S-


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## yeatzee (Oct 13, 2008)

Yea I was thinking the same thing.....I have one tht looks very similiar to that but is def. not pink lol. I was thinking like pink like on an orchid mantis or something.


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## cloud jaguar (Oct 14, 2008)

Not pink like an orchid mantis - more like a tan with strong pink-peach hues. - yes, more PEACH than pink - but with green under legs. If that is a natural color of this type of mantis that would be excellent. A friend of mine in Pasadena remarked he had also seen pink mantids in some bush on his property - perhaps these are endemic to the area. I have mostly found S. Californica in Zinnias and Roses - all green. I have one of those spiky trees with giant pink and white blooms - the trees that have these Kapok seed pods. Anyways, i have thought that the flower canopy of these trees would be an excellent habitat for colonies of mantids - i wonder if they like those... anyone know? Perhaps the pink one we caught came from there

~Arkanis


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## cloud jaguar (Oct 22, 2008)

Actually we found out these are S. Limbata, not S. Californica, lol. So my aunt called me yesterday and mentioned the peach colored mantis she had seen in her yard - so i guess these do exist around pasadena - that is the third one i have heard about here.


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## Hypoponera (Oct 22, 2008)

I hatched an S. limbata ooth last year. I did end up with a single pink/peach-ish colored female and also an ivory/cream male. I did mate them. The male did get eaten. Then the female fattened up, and died! No ooth laid. All the other nymphs from that ooth developed into "standard" colors like brown, tan and green.


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