Adventures in Wild Collecting

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Meiji

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This thread is for exciting stories of collecting mantises in the wild. What's your most memorable experience? What's the farthest you've traveled to collected mantises? Have you ever personally tried introducing a species to cultivation? Do you have any plans for wild collection in the future? Etcetera.

 
Meiji said:
This thread is for exciting stories of collecting mantises in the wild. What's your most memorable experience? What's the farthest you've traveled to collected mantises? Have you ever personally tried introducing a species to cultivation? Do you have any plans for wild collection in the future? Etcetera.
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I really want to plan a huge trip to somewhere to collect orchids or species like that. I bet it would be hard to get them back though?

 
When i went to spain i always thought it would be great to find an empusa pennata, we went for two weeks and i searched everyday, but on the last day had one last bug hunt and found one :lol:

 
I have been going out and finding them since I was able to walk. I have a very good eye to find them. Once place sticks in my mind. I was a kid probably about 10 or so. There was a very large lot that was overgrown. This place was absolutely FULL of chinese and carolina mantids. I went there everyday after school. I took many mantids from there and the ones I tried to keep I usually killed because I played with them too much. I would love to go there alone just to find the mantids.

I was back in that area last summer and went by there. The lot is still there but is overgrown with trees and there were no mantids. I grew up in central Illinois and that area was just full of mantids.

 
I carried out many field trips in the tropics where I managed to find "the one or other" mantid. I also was in the Meditteranean region several times. There aren't many mantids in Central Europe.

I have a good eye meanwhile. Other collegues prefer sweep-netting in open habitats and forest edges, but I have learned to see them in the forest, which isn't easy. There is no particular story that outweighed the other, but the last time I was really happy was when I first found my own D. trigonodera.

Among the species or stocks I introduced into the hobby were: Popa spurca spurca, Pseudocreobotra ocellata, Acanthops falcata, Angela championi, Antemna rapax, Euchomenella heteroptera, D. trigonodera, D. lobata, Empusa pennata, Acromantis sp., Hierodula cf. tenuis and others. Most of the older species have already dissappeared again in captivity.

 
MANTIS DUDE said:
Well, I found a lot that is right next to a lake that Is packed with hundreds of feeder insects, bees, crickets, moths, butterflys, wasps, ants, wierd small spike like insects that I cant identify. It has a lush rainforest of grass, bushes, vines, moss, ferns, herbs, etc. WHY CANT I FIND ANY MANTIDS!?! :huh: It would seem that these are the perfect conditions for them and I want to find at least one before the whole things built over with a house. Ive found a bunch of other things like, a cross spider, giant butterfly, grasshopper, scarab beatles, love bugs. Ive looked at noon and at dusk but I still don't see any.Does anyone have any ideas on why I dont see any?P.S. Pardon me if I seem a little frusterated.
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Despite their well-known cannibalistic tendencies, I have always found that mantises (at least in the case of those I've been able to catch wild in the Northeastern US) live in rather dense population groups. A given 3m x 3m area of meadow either has zero mantises or at least a half dozen (albiet the bigger they grow, the more territory they stake out as terra prohibita for everyone else).

Given how well they hide, sweep-netting can be a good method to survey an area although on my recent collecting trip in Massachusetts the Chinese Mantises were already big enough to be seen scuttling away from me as I searched the brush.

 
The best story I have has a sad ending. Back in '95 Uncle Sam sent me on an "all expenses paid" vacation to Egypt. I found loads of cool bugs. Mantids were EVERYWHERE!! I kept about a dozen loose in the tent. The other 9 guys in the tent liked having the mantids eating the flies. I think there were 100 flies per mantid. As the vacation started to wind down, I needed to find a way to get the mantids back home to Ohio. I started to search for ooths.

I was there from Aug to Dec. In early Nov, ALL the adult mantids dissapeared over night. I spent the rest of the time searching for ooths. Alas, not one could I find. All those mantids and not a single one to make the trip back. So I left and returned empty handed. But I did have a killer tan for the ladies when I went back! So not a total loss :D

 
I'd have to say the only story dealing with travel and mantids would be when I went out to ohio to see my sister.

When we left I had recently caught an adult female european, I had my heart set on finding a male while out in ohio. Well my first encounter was at an applebees on the michgan border. I found an adult female chinese while we were entering the resturtant, I could'nt get into the car to grab my containers so I just grabbed her and placed her in a bush in the front of the resturtant. When leaving I was amazed to find her still sitting where I placed her, and then I found another adult female chinese while walking back to the car. I ended up keeping the second one, the first one I found was old and dying.

Back at our hotel the next night I found an adult male chinese wondering about. I went to go grab the little guy and ended up chasing him across half the parking lot, and getting quite a few pinches in the process. The next morning there was an adult male european sitting on my dad's truck. I of course caugth the little bugger.

I didn't find any more mantids while in ohio or in Indiana, but I came home with three healthy mantids.

Though one was munched on crickets the day I got back. <_<

 
i wish i could collect mantids... no native species here in the UK, and the only place i go on holiday too is Majorca, and im not sure that there's any native species there as its a relatively small island

 
Oh, there are some: M. religiosa, Iris oratoria, Empusa pennata, Ameles decolor, Sphodromantis viridis, just to name a few...

 
Every time I have found them in the wild it was when I wasnt looking for them. The last time was in may when we found a L-1 nymph on my sister's shoulder. I caught it and a moment later it jumped off my hand and literally disappeared into the wind.

 

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