cloud jaguar
Well-known member
I recently let a pet mantid go. she had been an adult for about 3 or 4 months and was the last of some winter-born nymphs that I raised up from an ooth.
An s. limbata, she never mated and was one of the rare survivors of the pink/peach camo morph i really like. I also love the yellow, black camo, white, copper camo, and purple legged morphs of these. I think they are very colorful for U.S. native mantids, probably due to their preference for roses and zinnias (the most frequent plants I have seen them on in the wild).
Interestingly, she never mated and NEVER LAID AN OOTH. Technically i guess she is what is referred to (erroneously?) as eggbound. Phil seems to know something about this so please let us know about it. This also happened to som GSE flower mantids i had - never laid a single ooth. I live in the desert so local conditions could affect ooth laying or at least add another variable to the mix.
She, the pink s. limbata, lived happily as an adult and i recently let her go so that she can convalesce in the mantid garden (recently weeded by my tireless wife) before her appointment with the infinite. I say her yesterday peering from the heavy foliage of her new home - a bamboo fence covered with passion flower and passion fruit vines. Anyways, my point is that she never laid an ooth yet she seemed healthy and happy, albeit a bit of the bloat perhaps. Did not really seem to affect her much though.
So what is egg-bound really? Most egyptians that we had developed a bloat and only managed to lay smallish odd-shaped infertile ooths - were they eggbound? conversely, i thought Phil said something about mantids will only deposit eggs in ooths if they are fertile (plz correct me if i am wrong Phil), but my point is after my wife's parthenogenic m. paykulii Mary hatched along with 2 other sisters, i thought the rest of the large ooth did not hatch because because we had not watered it as much as we would have if it were fertilized. However, upon opening up the ooth 2 weeks after the mantids hatched out (assuming it would be dried out or somethng) i noticed there were tons of undeveloped clear eggs in there. Surely these were infertile? Was the virgin egyptian mantid who laid the ooth Mary the parthenogenic mantid came from oothbound if she only laid 2 ooths?
An s. limbata, she never mated and was one of the rare survivors of the pink/peach camo morph i really like. I also love the yellow, black camo, white, copper camo, and purple legged morphs of these. I think they are very colorful for U.S. native mantids, probably due to their preference for roses and zinnias (the most frequent plants I have seen them on in the wild).
Interestingly, she never mated and NEVER LAID AN OOTH. Technically i guess she is what is referred to (erroneously?) as eggbound. Phil seems to know something about this so please let us know about it. This also happened to som GSE flower mantids i had - never laid a single ooth. I live in the desert so local conditions could affect ooth laying or at least add another variable to the mix.
She, the pink s. limbata, lived happily as an adult and i recently let her go so that she can convalesce in the mantid garden (recently weeded by my tireless wife) before her appointment with the infinite. I say her yesterday peering from the heavy foliage of her new home - a bamboo fence covered with passion flower and passion fruit vines. Anyways, my point is that she never laid an ooth yet she seemed healthy and happy, albeit a bit of the bloat perhaps. Did not really seem to affect her much though.
So what is egg-bound really? Most egyptians that we had developed a bloat and only managed to lay smallish odd-shaped infertile ooths - were they eggbound? conversely, i thought Phil said something about mantids will only deposit eggs in ooths if they are fertile (plz correct me if i am wrong Phil), but my point is after my wife's parthenogenic m. paykulii Mary hatched along with 2 other sisters, i thought the rest of the large ooth did not hatch because because we had not watered it as much as we would have if it were fertilized. However, upon opening up the ooth 2 weeks after the mantids hatched out (assuming it would be dried out or somethng) i noticed there were tons of undeveloped clear eggs in there. Surely these were infertile? Was the virgin egyptian mantid who laid the ooth Mary the parthenogenic mantid came from oothbound if she only laid 2 ooths?
