PhilinYuma
Well-known member
O.K. This is becoming pretty confused and was not improved by my wrongly saying "tropical" instead of "subtropical", though to tell the truth, it's easy to think that you are in the tropics in parts of SE Asia. O.K., let's straighten this out.
The two Tenodera species, T. sinensis and T. angustipenis were almost certainly sympatric originally and have become so again in recent times. There is some reason to belive that they have evolved from the same immediate ancestor. A few years ago, Christian Schwartz made a very useful post on this issue (I found it in the search engine under "sympatric") at http://mantidforum.n...ic&fromsearch=1&
see post 21 et seq. If you get a chance to read the article by Kathet that he cites (she was a student of Hurd's who is second author).do since it shows how the biological species definition can work even for geographicallty sympatric specioes.
Aside from sympatry and allopatry, the arrangement that Kathet and Hurd describe does not function primarily in terms of speciation but to best distribute the biomass among top insect predators. I think that i have mentioned before, and if not, someone else has, that the size discrepancy between male and female mantids of the same species and the latter's tendency to eat larger prey, reduces competition between the sexes for the same, finite source of food.
Oh, and yes, Chinese mantids are adventitious in the US and have adapted tofrom a sub tropical climate to one of the colder corners of our nearctic sub continent.
The two Tenodera species, T. sinensis and T. angustipenis were almost certainly sympatric originally and have become so again in recent times. There is some reason to belive that they have evolved from the same immediate ancestor. A few years ago, Christian Schwartz made a very useful post on this issue (I found it in the search engine under "sympatric") at http://mantidforum.n...ic&fromsearch=1&
see post 21 et seq. If you get a chance to read the article by Kathet that he cites (she was a student of Hurd's who is second author).do since it shows how the biological species definition can work even for geographicallty sympatric specioes.
Aside from sympatry and allopatry, the arrangement that Kathet and Hurd describe does not function primarily in terms of speciation but to best distribute the biomass among top insect predators. I think that i have mentioned before, and if not, someone else has, that the size discrepancy between male and female mantids of the same species and the latter's tendency to eat larger prey, reduces competition between the sexes for the same, finite source of food.
Oh, and yes, Chinese mantids are adventitious in the US and have adapted tofrom a sub tropical climate to one of the colder corners of our nearctic sub continent.
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