Communal Mantids (revisited)

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cloud jaguar

cloud jaguar

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Recently I have seriously revised my ideas regarding "communal mantids."

Whereas first I thought Egyptian Pygmies were communal, I have since realized that far from being communal, these guys eat each other like frito snacks.

Whereas we first thought Gambian Spotted Eyes were communal, they seem to, albeit infrequently, chow down on each other like candy corn.

Now my wife has 3 ghost nymphs (1x 3/4 inch and 2x 1") and she is very wary of them eating each other if she puts them together - are these truly communal or should not be kept together?

ARE COMMUNAL MANTIDS ONLY TO BE KEPT TOGETHER AS ADULTS?

 
hrm... of those you list, I only have the Gambian Spotted Eyes, but only have a couple out of my first batch of 16 that were lost due to cannibalism. They were housed in two separate containers originally with 7 in a 24 oz. and 9 in a 32 oz. Now they both have 6 each at L4 ready to molt to L5.

One of the victims did survive for a few days thorax-up. Managed to grab some flies too. Makes me wonder if it 'protected' itself, albeit a little too late.

 
Unfortunately, mantis will eat each other when food source is limited, and a small enclosure would speed up the process of cannibalism. However, some mantis are less cannibalistic.

Ghost mantis do alright together at nymph stages ( with sufficient food and room) but at adult female regularly kill the advancing male. If you have only few it is best to keep them each individually.

Egyptian mantis ( Mionantis paykulli) eat each other even when plentyof food provided. I would rank them as bad as any Hierodula so.

The nicest " communal" species I have ever kept ( adult or nymphs) are Zoolea, Violin, Texas unicorn, Arizona unicorn where cannibalism rarely happen to me. Also I didn't lose a single nymph or adult from cannibalism.

The worst for me is Rhombodera.... They just hate each other so much they want to chew each other head off :)

 
Arkanis said:
Recently I have seriously revised my ideas regarding "communal mantids."Whereas first I thought Egyptian Pygmies were communal, I have since realized that far from being communal, these guys eat each other like frito snacks.

Whereas we first thought Gambian Spotted Eyes were communal, they seem to, albeit infrequently, chow down on each other like candy corn.

Now my wife has 3 ghost nymphs (1x 3/4 inch and 2x 1") and she is very wary of them eating each other if she puts them together - are these truly communal or should not be kept together?

ARE COMMUNAL MANTIDS ONLY TO BE KEPT TOGETHER AS ADULTS?
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So far as I can tell. there is no such thing as a "communal" mantis in the sense that say, roaches are communal. I hope that we hear from breeders like Yen Saw and Hibicusmile who breed large numbers of mantids and find that management is made easier by having a number of the less aggressive species of about the same age together in a large enclosure with enough branches and greenery so that they can be as "uncommunal" as possible. If I understand rightly, Hibiscusmile only keeps fertilized female ghosts together.

Certainly, if you have only three ghost nymphs, your chances of all three making it to adulthood are greatly enhanced if you raise them in their own pots. If ever I have a bunch of ghosts of different colors (crossed fingers emoticon; Superman did his thing with Female #2 last night!) and don't have to worry about having enough for breeding stock, I would like to keep a bunch of adult females together in a 20 gal. tank for display and the awed amazement of me and my friends. But aside from the cannibalism issue, there is a much greater danger of a molting nymph being dislodged, and it is very hard to determine how well each one is eating. Also, in an enclosure large enough for the mantids to be relatively safe, food density drops sharply, i.e., one cricket in a pot has 32 ozs in which to roam, eight crix in a twenty gallon tank with eight mantids each have 21/2 gallons.

Note also, that though Kamakiri has lost 25% of his gambians, he started off with a good margin for error. At the same rate of attrition, you should expect to have 2.25 ghosts left by L5. :eek: I am trying to keep at least ten of each species that I have, but that's not always possible, and my four P. wahlbergii went into separate pots yesterday at L3.

Still, since I have only been in the mantis racket for under five months, I am sure that there will be a lot of members with more experience and perhaps a different opinion.

When I started writing this, Yen Saw had not replied. Obviously, you type faster than I, mate!

 
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Well Yen about covered it, there are very few to keep together, right now Phil, I have probably 2 dozen or more containers with groups of 10 or more together. Keep in mind, they are not all adults, some are, like the buds, texans, arizonas, ants, mios, statilia, new zealands, creos, ocellas , dead leafs, trachodes, and many others to many to remember. The texan and arizona will eat the mate sometimes, for me more than for Yen, but I think that is because [SIZE=8pt]twitch, [/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]the boys bother the girls and the only way to make them stop is to chew their heads off! I have a lot of dead leafs together, and violins, the next best after those two is the ghosts... ough, even saying ghost makes me nervouse :lol: . They do ok together, but don't advise sticking your hand in there! ;) That is really about it, not many like being together, the other ones that are bad together like the sheilds are the wide arms, they will eat anything that even thinks of passing by them, the best u can do is to take a container big enough for a few of them to meet seldomly with plenty of resting places and food, other than that, maybe an ankle chain![/SIZE]

 
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Be careful with Empusa - they stalk their prey, and they stalk each other from their adjacent containers - despite being frail Empusidae, these mantids eat tons of flies, and are really ferocious with their attacks.

Best for communal keeping? Gongylus gongylodes - give them plenty of food and a lot of space, they won't touch each other.

 
There is some definition problem here. There aren't any "communal" mantids. But you can keep several species communally, depending on space and arrangement. I keep all my mantids communally (even adult females), with only a few exceptions, but this only works with large containers. If you prefer boxes, they have to be kept alone.

 
right now Phil, I have probably 2 dozen or more containers with groups of 10 or more together. Keep in mind, they are not all adults, some are, like the buds, texans, arizonas, ants, mios, statilia, new zealands, creos, ocellas , dead leafs, trachodes, and many others to many to remember.

You touch on what is the biggest mantis-keeping issue for me right now, Rebecca. I am currently keeping a few bunches of young nymphs (L2-3) together, but I have forty pots with individual mantids in them, and servicing that many pots is quite time consuming. Since my collection continues to increase, it seems to me that I shall have to keep some species -- and you and Yen have been most helpful in suggesting which ones -- together in larger enclosures. I note that on Mantis Place you only recommend the 12" cubes as "holding pens." What kind of and what size "community" enclosures are you using? I have used the cubes (approx. 7.5 gal) for Chinese, because of the high ooth hatch rate, through L3 before separating them. 10 gal fish tanks, at about $1.00/gal seem to be the most economical and are easy to "mantis proof" (though, come to think of it, your huge enclosure [approx 54gal] are cheaper yet) but any experienced-based suggestions from you or anyone else who is breeding en masse, will be most helpful in framing my decision on how to move forward.

Thanks in advance! :)

I am also setting up a small first aid kit for my setup with the usual dressings and antibacterials, a tourniquet and bone saw, several vials of morphine (what the hey!) and the more common types of mantis anti venom. You can't be too careful! :p

 
I am also setting up a small first aid kit for my setup with the usual dressings and antibacterials, a tourniquet and bone saw, several vials of morphine (what the hey!) and the more common types of mantis anti venom. You can't be too careful! :p Well that works for me, I cut my fingers every day, so anything will be a good thing.

The post on the site are old, and from my fav guy Nick! And I havent had the chance (as u may well know, I have probably 3000 mantis and feeders to take care of so time is sparce!) to say the least, to update the site, I do use the cubes a for them, because they hang onto them so well, but I mainly use them for breeding and molting the bigger species that I worry about falling. Maninly I use the large and med caves, I decorate them with the cloth or silk flowers with real or fake branches and that is what I rear a lot of my species in, they are so roomy and I can turn them on all four sides which is really important when nymphs are in them so they can fill it up and molt good and still find their food, I set them on end when using for older mantis, the large cage is about 20" tall and I have the malasian long neck, dead leafs, ghost girls, grass and a few other species in there. The med cage gets the creos, parvas, statilia d and m and ants, mio, and all the nymphs go in there too. The cages are the best in my opinion as they are tall and roomy, and best of all, I am able to vent them so they look great! I do it right now for free, but will charge for venting on the new site, dont have time to make money now, ha ha ha, I kill me! Tomorrow I will take a good, :rolleyes: pic of the caves with the new vents and some mantis in it to show u the way I set them up, I cannot do it now as they have all retired to their rooms for the evening :lol: and I am afraid to wake them, they can be really nasty if I disturb their sleep :huh: or in other words, I scared! But ps, the cubes are still great, the only thing I dont like about them, is they are a little harder to clean with many mantis inside, with all my containers, and I guess I will show that tomorrow too, is with the cleanout and feeding hole, I do not remove the mantis (hence the bite on my arm from ooth hunting) to clean them out, I love it and do it with them once a week!

 
yen_saw said:
The worst for me is Rhombodera.... They just hate each other so much they want to chew each other head off :)
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It was funny when my shield mantises were kept together as nymphs. When one caught a fruit fly, another one somehow knew just by looking and would try to eat the fly from the catcher's arm. I thought it was hilarious!

Anyway, I separated them quite early because of cannibalism so I have like 17 separate containers of them now. None of them have died ever since I separated them like 3-4 months ago.

 
OGIGA said:
It was funny when my shield mantises were kept together as nymphs. When one caught a fruit fly, another one somehow knew just by looking and would try to eat the fly from the catcher's arm. I thought it was hilarious!Anyway, I separated them quite early because of cannibalism so I have like 17 separate containers of them now. None of them have died ever since I separated them like 3-4 months ago.
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Hmmm... interesting. Thanks for the info... going to keep that in mind with my bunch! ;) With my first Shield mantis ooth I lost A LOT to what I think must have been cannibalism. I only actually witnessed one incident, but the rest just "disappeared." I think my mistake was trying to feed them D. hydei at F1, as I had lots of them but only a very small amount of D. melanogaster at the time. (I had some even smaller hatchlings of other species that I was saving and using the D. melanogaster for). I kept anxiously watching, but would never see the Shield nymphs eat. :unsure: I guess they ate when I wasn't watching, and preferred their skinnier siblings to the fat D. hydei they were given.

With my second ooth that just hatched I'm more prepared this time. Have plenty of D. melanogaster for them and have separated them into smaller numbers in the net cubes (too many to separate individually yet). Hopefully this will help avoid the massive MIA's that occurred with the first bunch!

 
Is it possible that despite the amount of food and space present, individual mantids may not be as cannibalistic as others? I say this because I've kept I. oratoria (which I know are in no way "communal") adults together and nymphs together. But before, my pregnant I. oratoria female shared her enclosure with two adult males (in a 20oz container) and I had as much as 4 adult females in a 20oz container without any casualties. But this generation, I wasn't able to keep two adult females in the same container without them eating each other even in a ten gallon tank! There were less crix in the 20 oz container last year (when I was catching the crix) than there were in the ten gallon tank this year (when I bought crix). I even kept the density of the crix up and ensured that they could climb the branches up towards the mantids. But this year's batch seems to be more aggressive than last year, where even my mom could take care of two pregnant females in the same container for two weeks.

Long story short, is there some tolerance level between mantids (besides space, sex, and food factors), and if so, how are they determined. BTW, the origin of the individuals didn't seem to matter, becasue the wild caught mantids were docile last year, while the wild caught mantids this year were aggressive. The captive mantids last year were "average" and this years batch is just plain mean.

 
When I had 2 ghosts they were 100% communal, they could climb on top of each other and not really care. HOWEVER it will probably vary depending on the mantis. Mine had been kept all their lives with about 50 other ghosts in a massive tank until I bought thenm at subadult.

 

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