# making an orchid pink ?



## Johnald Chaffinch

i noticed in some photos orchid mantids are sometimes pinkish and other times they have no pink. i have one and it has no pink, does anyone know if i can make it turn pink somehow?


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## Andrew

Up the humidity &amp; temp.


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## Johnald Chaffinch

both? isnt just one of them the significant factor that determines the colour? or is it just regional colour variations of the species


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## Executor of Fruit Flies

House them with pink flowers. Make sure they're the real ones. Fake ones will work, but nowhere near as well as real ones. I know from experience, but with spiny flower mantises, though I'm sure the color change "activation" is similar. I couldn't get it to keep it's super pink tinge, however, since winter killed the pink-tree flowers i picked every now and then to change it's color. I have a couple now that have a slight color change from fake flowers, but it's very slight(one red, one yellow).

You may need a bigger cage for this. Perhaps one big enough to put a potted pink orchid(for best mimicking it's natural habitat) inside for it to sit on.


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## Jwonni

i've thought about getting an orchid for my orchid mantis but the stems are soooo long it would need a big home and the mantids at the moment are small

i may when i get one of the females to adulthood get her an orchid i bet it could look really good


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## Rib

that would be too late, mantids change colour very gradually over time. If you really want a pink Mantis, its best to introduce some pink to its enclosure sooner rather than later


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## Jwonni

me too late? i dont wanna change the colour i just meant as orcids look nice and it might be nice to have an orchifd mantis living on an orchid


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## DeShawn

I have tried so many different things, but have never really found anything that made a huge difference in color. They always seem to come out different. For instance, I had 6 female orchid mantids, all kept under the same conditions of 75-80°F, 60-65% humidity, and fed the same food. Out of the six, 4 got allot of pink on them and 2 remained mostly white. A few years ago under mostly the same conditions (different food), out of 8 females only 2 were pink and 1 was yellow (the only mostly yellow orchid I have ever had). The rest were white. I did not include anything in the containers except white paper towel for them to grip on.

Wahlbergii however were a bit different. Whatever color lid I had on the critter keepers was the color they turned (slightly). The colors I have seen are yellow, green, white, pink, black, and purple. The funny thing is they didn't always turn the color of the lid. I would often get a pink wahlbergii when using a purple or green lid, and vice versa. Go figure...

In my opinion, it is mostly due to genetics and humidity, as Andrew stated. No harm in trying the added plants though. Plus it looks so much cooler than my plain setups of a cup, lid, and a stick.

http://www.mantiskingdom.com/gallery/album...01/DSCN7481.JPG


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## Rib

> me too late? i dont wanna change the colour i just meant as orcids look nice and it might be nice to have an orchifd mantis living on an orchid


sorry, I assumed it was you that started the thread. My bad


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## Andrew

With my female orchid, she did not change color until I turned up the humidity. After that, she turned a little more pink every day for a certain amount of time, and then the color change process became a lot slower.

Unfortunately, though, she died during her final molt...  

Thanks,

Andrew


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## Jodokohajjio

Yeah, in most cases humidity is the determining factor in mantis color morph. Try experimenting with different humidity.


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## Johnald Chaffinch

righty, will do. is totally white now so will let ya know what i find out with mine. thanks.


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## Johnald Chaffinch

not managed to make my Hymenopus coronatus (orchid) pink after all this time, but have made one of my phyllocrania paradoxa's (ghosts) bright green with really high humidity.

i was wondering has anybody managed to make ghosts any other colours apart from green and brown? as i've seen photos of purple and red ones, has anybody managed to make that happen?


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## Jwonni

i've never even seen a pic of a ghost in green


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## Johnald Chaffinch

> i've never even seen a pic of a ghost in green


here's some before and after pics of my ghost. all i did was increase humidity, and after next shed it did this:







(excuse the dry paint on the keyboard)


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## Jwonni

cheers m8

i think it may look better green


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## Johnald Chaffinch

just thought i'd show this too. this ghost is in same humidity and temp as the one that's gone fully green ( in pic before ) but is in a more brown leafy environment ( and is different sex ). it's at the same moult as the green one in the pic before but it looks like this instead. dramatic difference! :






what do people think this is due to ?


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## ibanez_freak

If your green ghost is female then sex. I kept mine the same humidity all the time and then the male changed very little while the female went from beige to green.

Cheers, Cameron.


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## Lukony

I've taken enough genetics classes to know this. Just breed them like you would a flower of the same species. An orchid can turn out to be many colors. But, if you want more pinks. Than breed the pinks with the pinks and the white with the white etc. It is a small coding in the DNA that makes the difference in the color I am guessing since the surroundings don't seem to affect very many mantids in their coloring. You are basically just basically using the genotype with the coloring. Mendelian had the basic concept to it all. Though he wasn't right on with all of it. I hope this helps some. I am guessing this would help in being more in control of the coloring. Eventually the more pinks you breed together, the stronger the blood line for it gets.


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## julian camilo

I appreciate you might know more than me about genetics but this explanation just does not seem to sit well with me. I do not think it is as simple as just genetics. obviously genetics must bear some influence, maybe even a strong influence, I dont know. However it cant be the whole reason, I think there are too many other factors that we are unable to experiment with accurately. Its very easy to keep a handful of mantids in "the same" conditions, but it is very difficult for us to control so many other factors that are a possibility like light intensity, the nutritional content of the food they get, random variation. you said its "basically using the genotype with the colouring" but you dont mention that genotype and phenotype (genotype + environment → phenotype) are not always directly correlated. Some genes only lead to a certain phenotype when the organism is also in particular environmental conditions. I think the situation here is closer to Polyphenism. This is when there are several phenotypes in a population which are not caused by differences in their genetic makeup (such as when people observe that even mantids from the same ootheca vary greatly in their colouring). As far as I know, it is not really known why these differences occur but it is speculated that they are due to environemental factors, but random variation may also play a large role. This is just an opinion obviously, but I don't think its as easy as just down to genetics.


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## Yosei

Yeah, I've always thought more environmental than genetics but it could be both. I have a couple of ghosts also and I think others have said this but I haven't really seen a green male before (I would like to see one though!!  )


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## Lukony

It was just an idea. I see the point to the surrounding. Just made sense since I see more white that the white is probably the dominant color that is passed on and the pink is the recessive.

So white being WW, Ww

and pink being ww

Female Male

Ww ww

w w

W Ww Ww

w ww ww

you have a 50% chance of it being white or pink in this case. But it you have two pink mantids that are both ww, then the chances are almost indefinant that it will be pink. I don't know if it is genetic of the environtment. If it is genetic this is how it would work. If it is the envornment then I have no idea. You would just have to figure out the dominant and recessive gene and that will help you figure out the phenotype. Hope this helps, you never know.


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## julian camilo

its not as easy as that. that method can be used where something such as smooth skinned or wrinkled peas, an experiment by Mendel who you cited. however, the question with colour isnt as simple as white or pink, wrinkly or smooth, its a gradiated spectrum between the two, a continuos trait. some will have blotches of pink on mainly white, some will be an even pink, it is a very wide spectrum of variation. if you were to apply the method you cited to orchid mantis colour, then supposedly if you bred solely white specimens for generations and generations, eventually you would never get pink mantids, as the recessive gene is gradually being eliminated more and more through each passing generation. i've obviously never done this and dont know that it has been attempted but im pretty sure even after so many generations, pink mantids would still occour. if we are talking genes being responsible for a mantids colour, then i think we can safely say they are responsible for the range of colours possible. however, i really do not think genes are responsible for determining the actual colour within that spectrum of possible colouration of each individual. i could very easily be wrong of course as i am just assuming, i have conducted no experiements and have not read of any findings or so related to this, so its just an educated guess and common sense.

ps - there was an interesting thread or two about this very subject on the old insecthobbyist.com mantis forum with contributions by chun and nrtheastah, but it was in 2002 and the archive doesnt go back far enough, so i couldnt find it to post here, which is a shame, it would have been interesting to follow up on some the ideas raised therein.


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## Lukony

The only way to know would really be to try it I guess.


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## Johnald Chaffinch

from what i've read many times - with mantids sometimes it's the humidity or temperature that can influence their shade, and i've read that sometimes it can be the colour of their surroundings. obviously genetics plays a part in this, but i reckon that if you had a whole lineage of white orchid mantids and then for their offspring you made their humidity greater than you ever had for any of the others than it may go pinkish


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## rickyc666

what humidity did you raise it to in order to turn you P Paradoxa green?

Mine's very dark brown with white/pale grey eyes.

P.s. Hi to everyone, this is my first post as ive only just joined.


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## Ian

I may have already said this Rich...but welcome


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## jandl2204

just a quick sweeping point.

High Humidity







Low Humidity.






a small experiment i decided to implement once i saw similar variations in some wc pw's which i recieved.

all the variations developed in completely white plastic cups.

there were no decorations nor substrate. both females were kept at the same temperatures but were in containers at different levels of humidity, they were from two separate oothecas but were similar morphs when the experiment began. Both were approx. L4 when i began to change the humidity and non of mantids from the same oothecas ever exerted such morph traits (they were kept in similar conditions as to eliminate other variables)

Just an interesting point.


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## Lukony

Wow, I have never seen a green like that.


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## jandl2204

admittedly the reddish morph returned to a general colouration as i began to increase the humidity once i noticed she was going to shed to an adult. Simply as i wanted her wings to fully form without any risk of a poor shed. Though i will be trying this again at a later date.

Lee


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## Isis

Lukony, it is just childish to try to just explain such a thing like this. You do only know a Mendel's puzzle and you think you're cool.

Determination of colour in a various range of species and genders of many families of species and depends not only on one gene and it is not a quality but a quantity feature. More genes means more possibilities of colour. Ever heard of it? Only very sufisticated statistical methods can more or less accurately define which factor matters in such things as milk productivity of cows, fur colour of mammals species, and same as here: no specialist was ever working

on mantid colour and that's why there is o much of controversy.

And secondly the activity of these colour genes is activated or suppressed by enviromental factors such as temperature, humidity (I suppose it the major role in the process), colour of enviroment (I think it counts the least) etc. The expression of genes, protein synthesis etc. are switched off or on whether conditions are different.

About humidity and colour: I think humidity has its reasons to be a deciding factor: green leaves transpirate. This is increasing humidity in surrondings. Mantis gets green, because leaves are green when they are alive.

When a mantid is living on branches, dead leaves, or in dry grass the surrondins are dry also. They get darker. Maybe the intense of this colour is decided by temperature and light? In dry grasslands there is hot. In shade of trees on branches- a bit colder.

What do you think of this theory?


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## Ian

Lighten up a bit guys..


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## bruty2fruity

innit guys relax. its friday. everyone has theories n thats all well n good.

also i have a reddish brown chinese mantis and all the others are a striking green.

i also have some giant indian mantises that are an emerald green with a blueish tinge there so pretty


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## DrM

> just a quick sweeping point.High Humidity
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> Low Humidity.
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> 
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> a small experiment i decided to implement once i saw similar variations in some wc pw's which i recieved.
> 
> all the variations developed in completely white plastic cups.
> 
> there were no decorations nor substrate. both females were kept at the same temperatures but were in containers at different levels of humidity, they were from two separate oothecas but were similar morphs when the experiment began. Both were approx. L4 when i began to change the humidity and non of mantids from the same oothecas ever exerted such morph traits (they were kept in similar conditions as to eliminate other variables)
> 
> Just an interesting point.


HI jandl2204

I just wanted to say .........U're little girls are sooo cute regardless of their green or beige coloring! Great job!


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