The Ice Ages wiped out most tropical fauna. At that point there weren't many tropical taxa left anyway, as tropical forests disappeared during the Miocene cooling. Those taxa with tropical relatives (Stagmomantis, Mantoida, Thesprotia, Brunneria etc.) re-invaded N-America later.No. I don't know about angustipennis, but aridifolia is a tropical species and doesn't need diapause.
The latter.
Such a thing doesn't exist. The extant species have undergone all about the same time of evolution. The original taxon doesn't exist anymore.
. If your interested you can google the Illumana sequencer which is a quite impressive display of the future potential of genetics. After sequencing you could compare the sequences for highly conserved areas which would actually be pretty plentiful across the board for all mantis species and probably a lot of other insects too (protein complexes, metabolic cycles, etc. are similar for quite a lot of animals). I suspect the major differences would be found within hox gene locations as these play a major role in the form of an animal and any similarities there would suggest close relation. However, as eukaryotes, mantids have quite a lot of "junk DNA" or introns (we actually don't really know if it's junk) that are excised from RNA before translation, so simple comparison of sequences may not be enough. This is why a lot of research involves turning gene expression on and off and seeing what happens in a life form. If you have any questions feel free to PM me.
