Well several updates since my last on my Deadleaf mantids.
After talking with member Sticky about a mantis monster movie I made a silly movie trailer of Terry attacking a San Francisco image on my computer screen (July 9th). Fun little project, but Sammy wanting nothing to do with it, but Terry seemed all for it - as I was going to have both of them attacking.
Sammy molted to an adult and grew her wings, and I witnessed her final molt, and took way too many photos. That was on Wednesday (July 15th). I setup a deal to get a her male for breeding and all looked to be good.
Terry died on Friday (July 24th), she was weak and fell to the bottom of her cup the night before. After helping her she manged to hang on her cup lid, with the cup sideways but by the next day she was gone. She aged 196 days (6 months 15 days). Her last photos are shown in a above post, other than her video.
Then 5 days later on Wednesday (July 29th) Sammy was dead in her cup, she aged 201 days (6 months 20 days). What a bummer, she never got her date.
As both deaths were so close together it seemed to be feeder related, as there was no vomit/blacking/or any visible signs for a cause of death. As they were so much larger mantids, bb flies were of little use to them; so they ate a mix of waxworm moths and crickets. As my other mantids that ate waxworm moths are still fine (and from a culture I've had going for several generations of moth cycles now), it seems the likely culprit was crickets.
Last photos I got were of Sammy molting to her adult form. Sadly I was going to do a new "photo shoot" around the time she died and it never happened.
