Tell that to my mantis moms. All of them protect their ooth for a day or two before they start eating for me. Consistently. Im not trying to start anything. But i disagree. From observation of my gravid females, they consistently wait a day or two before they eat the food.
Most likely it is that the mantids are in an enclosure and cannot stray far from the ooth. I have never witnessed such behavior in all the years of doing this. Every female I ever had quickly snatched up food after laying an ooth. I did a quick literature search and cannot find any papers on mantis ootheca guarding.
If you want to witness a mantis guarding her ooth, then you should keep an adult female D lobata, the girl will sit on it for several days; now i did not attempt to feed her while ahe was guarding so she didn't get stressed out, i waited til she moved away from it then fed her (four days later)
Not saying it doesn't happen, but I have never seen it. Nor can I find anything in the literature. I am just skeptical is all. I think in many cases the mantis just stays near the ooth because making the ooth is probably exhausting and energy intensive so the mantis doesn't want to move and waste energy. I think it would be easy to confuse that for guarding.
I think it's guarding because my moms swat flies away when they are near the ooth for a couple of days. and the breeding egg laying enclosure I have them in is a 5 gallon tank so there's plenty of room for them to move if they want to.
Mantises will also swat prey items or catch than drop them when they aren't hungry. It could be that some mantises just have a longer recovery time and tend to relax near the ootheca while they recover. Most of my girls spend at least some time recovering their energy hanging near their ooth after finishing the process. Like Rick however I have never witnessed any guarding behavior.
