Ootheca attacked by ants
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hello 
Your ooth was attacked by ants ? Or did you find in the nature the ooth ?
If it is in the nature, maybe it was open by a predator and then the ants arrived to clean up the place :lol:
If it is in your own breeding, I do not know, but if it is the case you can prevent it very easily.
Friendly
Julien
Your ooth was attacked by ants ? Or did you find in the nature the ooth ?If it is in the nature, maybe it was open by a predator and then the ants arrived to clean up the place :lol:
If it is in your own breeding, I do not know, but if it is the case you can prevent it very easily.
Friendly
Julien
Thanks Djoul
Actually my friend sent me a couple of ooths then when I opened the box I saw an ooth swarming with ants and the other ooths with 5 to 10 ants getting in and out of the ootheca. I immediately removed the invaded ooth from the others. Then removed as many as I can in the remaining ooths. I tried to hang them hoping that some of them will still hatch.
Maybe the ooth died in transit then the ants invade the ootheca in the post office.
Die Ants!
Actually my friend sent me a couple of ooths then when I opened the box I saw an ooth swarming with ants and the other ooths with 5 to 10 ants getting in and out of the ootheca. I immediately removed the invaded ooth from the others. Then removed as many as I can in the remaining ooths. I tried to hang them hoping that some of them will still hatch.
Maybe the ooth died in transit then the ants invade the ootheca in the post office.
Die Ants!
Kriss
Well-known member
Did the ants have little wings?
Ben.M
Well-known member
Could they possibly be paracidic wasps, it i not rare for wild caught ooth to contain these :roll:
Ben.M
Well-known member
This is a paracitic wasp,
Sooooooooooo, do they look like that
Sooooooooooo, do they look like that
yea, I just had a bunch of them hatch , they drilled tiny little holes to let themselves out of the Ooth. They took almost a week and a half to hatch, they just keep coming :arrow:
That's nothing! I had wasps emerging for over at least 5 weeks. This spring, I found a wild Stegmomantis limbata ooth. It already had several wasp exit holes on the sides. I incubated the ooth for 3 weeks and 20 mantid nymphs emerged. I kept the ooth in incubation for another week just in case of stragglers. After that, the ooth was placed in the mantid collection case which contains mothballs. A week later, I opened the case and found 2 wasps had died while trying to exit the ooth! So my pinned mantid collection now contains samples of the parasitic wasps! No wasps emerged while the ooth was in incubation though.
I did not get any mantis, and I finally had to run it under boiling water to finish them off inside. By the way thanks for the pic of the wasp, I was going to google for it to make sure of what they were and your pic was great.
Yeah i hated it too when wild collected ooth hatched out parasitic wasps
but i would just keep the ooth separately in a seal container (to avoid these wasps from attacking other incubating ooth) instead of boiling the infested ooth because some of the eggs that dodged the wasps attack will still hatch, parasitic wasps hatch out earlier than mantis nymph, but i have oothecae infested by wasps and still managed to hatch in later days. In fact i have seen some late wasps hatcher being devoured by the mantis hatchling. There was a pic from a German site showing the pic of a mantis eating a parasitic wasp... revenge!!
but i would just keep the ooth separately in a seal container (to avoid these wasps from attacking other incubating ooth) instead of boiling the infested ooth because some of the eggs that dodged the wasps attack will still hatch, parasitic wasps hatch out earlier than mantis nymph, but i have oothecae infested by wasps and still managed to hatch in later days. In fact i have seen some late wasps hatcher being devoured by the mantis hatchling. There was a pic from a German site showing the pic of a mantis eating a parasitic wasp... revenge!!
:mrgreen: Great, just great Yen!
OGIGA
Dead Leaf Mantis
Awesome! Muahaha! Mantis wins!
Ian
Well-known member
Ah yes, those parasitic wasps are a bugger! Never seen ants attack though...
Ah think i found the link, see last pic (Nov 2005) where a mantis is eating a wasp develope from the same oothecae. There are some interesting pics in this site too.
http://www.mantodea.info/cms/index.php?id=36&L=1
http://www.mantodea.info/cms/index.php?id=36&L=1
pizzuti
Well-known member
When I was a kid I thought one of my ooths was being invaded by ants. They turned out to be baby mantids.
They should be able to naturally defend themselves from ants outside, because in the wild they live among ands and continue to survive as a species. But if you're really worried, you could always keep them in a (ventilated) jar or cage outside.
They should be able to naturally defend themselves from ants outside, because in the wild they live among ands and continue to survive as a species. But if you're really worried, you could always keep them in a (ventilated) jar or cage outside.
asdsdf
Coolest Member
In the wild, ooths are only found in winter, usually, and ants are usually dead or not active in the winter, so, that's their natural defensive.
I don't think cold weather would be of much value against ants. If it were too cold for the ants, the female mantid would also be dead! Ants can handle adverse temps far better then mantids. Chances are that the egg case contains an ant repelent. Paper wasps do use a repelent on the pedicle of the nest.
Krissim Klaw
Well-known member
That was the exact same thing I thought when I was a kid and my first ooth hatched. :lol:
asdsdf
Coolest Member
but but but!!!! Almost all of the ants die in the winter except for the queen ant (Not from the cold, it's just the cycle)!!! Plus, the female does die, for your info. They don't neccessarily lay the ooth in winter.
