Some species cannot be sexed by counting the segments at L3 like most mantids but can be sexed in other ways, like Deroplatys lobata LOL! I mean all species cannot be sexed by counting the segments at L3 like most mantids.
:shifty:Raise them to adult and lets see who knows what they are talking about
I didn't mention a specific instar. And I did mention that other species have other clues that can be used which may work better than counting segments.
No need. Already told you what these are.Raise them to adult and lets see who knows what they are talking about
I just wanted to put it down here that some species are different.
Those you just posted are like what mine looked like. Some were female and some were male. I'd be interested to hear what others think these are and why because those are examples of what I found difficult to identity by counting segments (I can count 8 on all of them). Maybe I'm counting wrong, it's the very end of the abdomen that is tough.I'll raise them to adult in any case though we're pretty certain what they are. Here are 3 more at L4 to argue about
Crappy luck I recon.6 out of 6 mantids are male? Seems unlikely unless Norlin is picking males on purpose.
There is something like a 98% chance of getting at least one female out of 6 random mantids. If they are all males then, Norlin, buy a lottery ticket now! I have heard rumours of ooths producing all males though.
Females are larger when adults, but there have been talks on this forum that males grow faster than females - a mechanism to reduce inbreeding in the wild between members from the same ooth. Happened to me in the past for my captive bred mantids. I managed to save a few females before they were eaten by their older males (which were one or two molts ahead).
I noticed no major differences between sex and molting periods, definitely not multiple levels. My sample set is only 8 mantids though. If anything the females were slightly ahead of the males. Not much but the females molted 1 or 2 days ahead of the males. All my mantids molted very close to each other, possibly because I fed them all exactly the same amount of food and made sure they all actually caught the same amount of food. I also kept them in exactly the same environment. The last molt from sub-adult to adult the males stopped eating at the same time as the female but took over a week longer to finally molt to adult. My theory is they spent that extra time shrinking for their adult sized body because as sub-adults they were as big as the females but as adults they are very obviously smaller than the females.
