# colour morph



## Insectopia (Nov 13, 2010)

During the last week I observed a native Orthodera ministralis nymph in my garden. It was terribly easy to spot due to her orange colour. Today it had its last molt and, yep, the adult is still orange and the usual blue spots on its front femurs are pink.


----------



## d3xxer (Nov 13, 2010)

Omg thats so nice i would love to have one like this.

Its like Mantis Paragon  Maybe she can give you some minor arty aswell (Ultima oline)



Insectopia said:


> During the last week I observed a native Orthodera ministralis nymph in my garden. It was terribly easy to spot due to her orange colour. Today it had its last molt and, yep, the adult is still orange and the usual blue spots on its front femurs are pink.View attachment 1547


----------



## warpdrive (Nov 13, 2010)

now that guy is HOT. congrats on the nice find.

Harry


----------



## massaman (Nov 13, 2010)

Looks like we got to get this species into the U.S and into the hands of us mantis hobbyists!


----------



## Colorcham427 (Nov 13, 2010)

Insectopia said:


> During the last week I observed a native Orthodera ministralis nymph in my garden. It was terribly easy to spot due to her orange colour. Today it had its last molt and, yep, the adult is still orange and the usual blue spots on its front femurs are pink.View attachment 1547


sooo nice!!!!


----------



## GreenOasis (Nov 13, 2010)

I love the orange color &amp; the square shield! :drool:

Yes, we have to get those here!! :clap: 

-Carey Kurtz-

Green Oasis Reptiles


----------



## lancaster1313 (Nov 14, 2010)

Lovely!


----------



## PhilinYuma (Nov 14, 2010)

Well, Insectopia, of all th posts I have seen here over the past year, this is one of the most interesting and exciting. I sent your pic off to my friend Superfreak , who is an inactive member of this forum. She is a newly fledged biologist who will be starting a year of mantis research at Mcquarrie next year. She has raised hundreds of garden mantids and had neither seen or heard of anything like this. Her response was, "Wooooah"! Although apparently extremely rare in mantids, oz cicadas, as you know, frequently produce pink morphs, and Kamakiri, another member, was raising a pink strain of Stagmomantis limbata in California last year.

The phenomenon, of course, is erythrism, or "redism", which is no more helpful a term than melanism or xanthism when it comes to understanding why these color morphs occur. Since my knowledge of genetics is rather pathetic, I hoped that, whatever the cause of the mutation, a cross with a "normal" color morph would produce a Mendelian (1:2:1) distribution of dominant and recessive genes that would yield a a F3 population with about 25% orange mantids. 

Interestingly, there is a report of color morphs of O. ministralis in NZ in an old copy of _The New Zealand Entomologist_, 8:88-90 , and though the kiwi population of this species has been renamed (wrongly, in my opinion*) O. novaezealandiae, it is still the same mantis.

The specimen in this case was xanthic (yellow) but that should make no difference to the genetic distribution of its offspring Here is an account of the experiment:

The yellow female mantid from Waiheke I was kept in the laboratory and was mated

with a green male. She produced 2 oothecae from which 9 nymphs emerged on 16

September 1980; all were a yellowish green. 3 reached adulthood, 2 were female and 1

was a male. Both females were successfully mated with the male, and produced 6

oothecae. During June and July 1981 47 nymphs emerged: 37 were green or yellowish

green, and 10 were yellow.

The distribution of the morphs seems to follow the basic rule of Mendelian genetics. The yellowish green F2 generation appears to be heterozygous and the percentage of yellow nymphs in F3 looks very much like a a double recessive allele (c.f.). The distribution is 3.7:1 and the "ideal" distribution would be 3:1. Close enough with such a small population!

I don't know whether your male will yield the same results (I hope that he can survive multiple matings!), but there is reason to expect that he will.

So here's the good news, everyone! We already have this species in culture in the US, masquerading under the name of O. novaezealandiae (several members have offered it for sale over the past year) To get the orange morph, interested parties might want to establish a co op in which each member keeps about 100 specimens all the time, and then the first person to get the orange morph to F4 shares it with the others. This may be your big chance, Massaman!

Thanks again Insectopia, and please tell us that you are going to breed this guy with as many females as possible!   

* You can read the rather sad reasons for choosing the new name in _Fauna of New Zealand #19_, Mantodea, pp.1313-14. After buying a copy from oz, I found that it is available in PDF on the internet!


----------



## Precarious (Nov 15, 2010)

Very cool!


----------



## Insectopia (Nov 18, 2010)

Thanks a lot "PhilinYuma" for your help!

And thanks everyone for the interest and posts!

When I had found the little precious I got quite excited and very curious. I did find that PDF too but nothing else. I joined this forum because I couldn't find any more information. Glad I did  Maybe PhilinYuma's friend wants to get in touch with me?

If the yellowish green F2 offsprings in NZ would have been a dominant/recessive trait, they would have been uniformly green. So I'd say this was a case of co or incomplete dominance.

Would like to know if they did any molecular genetics on them.

Yes, I hope to mate the mantis. I think the "guy" is a female though ;-)

I fear that my mantis could be a double mutant since she is not yellow but bright orange.

But that judgement might just be a matter of perception. Maybe the NZ morph was orange too. I'd really love to see pictures of the NZ colour morph.

If my colour morph is based on a single mutation (and I don't pick a heterozygous male), the best result will be 25% orange morphs in F3.

If my colour morph is based on a double mutation (and I don't pick a heterozygous male), the best result will be only 1 in 16 orange morphs in F3.

But I believe that there is a good chance that a mate found in our garden might possess the recessives too.

So, lets keep our fingers crossed.

"PhilinYuma", yep, just looking at the pictures O. novaezealandiae and O. ministralis look at least very much alike. Did you hear of any colour morph in these species but the one described having occured in NZ. Do you now if there are any offsprings "left"?

Thanks!


----------



## Insectopia (Nov 24, 2010)

Just found a green male in our garden. The orange female is just doing fine. So, let's see what happens. Fingers crossed!


----------



## massaman (Apr 18, 2011)

Found this interesting site that it may be the same species of mantis as the Orthodera novaezealandiae!

Origin of Orthodera novaezealandiae


----------



## macawlover2 (Apr 19, 2011)

What a gorgeous mantis! I'm impressed that she made it to adulthood because that color must make her stand out like a sore thumb.


----------

