He already did. He is just wondering if the ootheca will hatch because of how warm it is.Stagmomantis limbata in nature would have laid oothecae already.
Scott
You are right and you are wrong, Salamonis. This species has already laid eggs in my area but egglaying is documented as persisting into December in Texas from ootheca laid in Superior, AZ (just north of the Gila River and west of the Coolidge Dam).
Since this is the only species that I own (until next week, Yay!) I have researched it as well as I could and found an excellent old article by a USDA scientist in AESA 30:1, "Biology of the Bordered Mantid, Stagomoomantis Limbata Hahn" available in its entirety (13pp.) on the Internet.
The Bureau of Entomology raised this insect outside, but in captivity, in an "insectary" between 1932 - 1934 for three generations, and though many entomological theories have come and gone since then, this factual report is as valid now as it was then.
During the three years in question, the monthly mean temperature never exceeded 86.3F or fell below F50.1. This is in marked contrast to current temperatures. In Nov. '33, the mean temp was 75.9, today, the high is F89.2, 12F above the modern average. Mean humidity ranged between 54.3% and 70%; yesterday's average was 28%
Of particular interest to me was the fact that in the first generation, the mean average time for males to develope to maturity was 7 days less than the females, but in the next generation, females developed on an average of ten days
faster than the males and the third generation was almost a dead heat, and the M:F ratio in all three years was close to 1:1!
All of the mantises hatched out of doors, but the author inferred diapause ("hibernation") from the fact that they wintered as ovae.
All three generations, on average, hatched between early March and early May with a minimum incubation time of 140 days and a maximum of 209.
No eggs were produced by parthenogenesis, but virgin females produced fertile ooths when mated for the first time 50 days after reaching maturity.
Arkanis:
From the recent temperatures that you cite, 85F- 97F, I imagine that you live in SE California (what we refer to as "west of Arizona") -- El Centro, perhaps, Mexicali? So far as I know, though, those towns don't get any frost, do they? S. limbata has only strayed across the Colorado River in the past fifty years or so, but if global warming continues to elevate Fall temperatures, it looks as though nymphs will have to adapt to overwintering or die and join all of those other recently wild critters (remember all of those lovely Malawi cichlids?) that now only exist in captivity.
I have an ootheca that was laid within hours of the female' s capture early this month and which I am wintering outside, now that the temperature is in the low nineties (everyone says, "love the cool weather!"). I shall let you know how it goes. Since it would not be misted in nature, I shall not do so, either
