Orchid male piggyback ride

[myzticalboi]

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

wow size difference is amazing! Nice pictures

 

[d17oug18]

seriously, how do these age in time in the wild lol. it looks like the male sheds twice and the female shed 10 x's lol, doesnt seem possible that this species survives in the wild you know?

 

[ShieldMantid1997]

yeah i hear you on that one.

 

[Idolofreak]

Nice. They just had some of these mate at the zoo. Once again, size difference is CRAZY. :blink:

 

[Precarious]

Holy ######!!! Baby got back!

Maybe my females are not as far along as I thought they were. :blink:

Hope she doesn't get hungry...

 

[myzticalboi]

Lol precarious!

 

[guapoalto049]

Is that who I think it is?! GO BUDDY GO!!!!

 

[myzticalboi]

Yes it is the young warrior!

 

[PhilinYuma]

seriously, how do these age in time in the wild lol. it looks like the male sheds twice and the female shed 10 x's lol, doesnt seem possible that this species survives in the wild you know?

It works fine in nature, Doug, on at least two levels. It's in culture where we have the problem, where we try to override the natural development that is designed to prevent sibling mating. This might be an element in Gill's interesting comments on captive race extinction.

In nature, ooth A hatches, say in May. The males develop well ahead of the females and if they are the first of the season may die before they can fertilize their siblings. The May ooth females are fertilized by males from an ooth that hatched in June and who have flown, perhaps for substantial distances, in answer to their pheromone invitation. This greatly reduces, though it does not completely eliminate, the possibility of sibling mating, and at the end of the season, most matings will be by pairs that are not very closely related.

The advantage of the size difference between males and females is at least twofold. Small males are less obvious to predators and have less weight to carry in their mating flights..Secondly, and this a common advantage of sexual dimorphism, the different sized adults will take different sized prey, which means that there is twice as much food available in a given area as there would be if both sexes relied on the same prey.

So this entomology stuff. Pretty good fun, huh?

 

[guapoalto049]

Joe: He was a stud from the start: lookin at all the older ladies even as an L2 I knew he'd make me proud!

Phil: Wouldn't the fact that females ooviposit multiple times (H. coronatus a dozen or so) allow for males from later ooths to mate with females of earlier ooths? It makes sense that a female will lay most of her ooths in a small vicinity, so the resulting population will be relatively close by. A female's siblings will be close, and thus quicker to respond to her pheromones.

This is all based on personal observation. I have been collecting M. religiosa for ~14 years. The field is completely surrounded by thick woods. Mantids from other populations would have to travel over a mile to reach this field (yes I live in the boonies!). The field has been producing every year and I can't imagine other males reaching the area. Assuming this population has been there much much longer than I've been alive, there must be a relatively limited number of alleles.

Sorry to be longwinded, but I'm not entirely convinced that inbreeding of mantids is as bad as some think.

 

[PhilinYuma]

No, I think that your points are well made. The whole concept of IGM strains where a captive strain is interbred for generations tends to support your belief that "interbreeding of mantids is not as bad as some think" Christian Schwartz, our one-time mantis guru was a strong advocate of the belief that it is not a problem. The tendency of the males of so many species, though, to mature much earlier than the females -- many of us have watched in despair as our poor old male gets more and more senile while waiting for a dilatory sister to give him his Big Moment, seems to suggest that nature favors non brother-sister crosses as does the fact that males will travel quite long distances (and your guess as to what a "quite longs distance" is, is as good as mine). to mate instead of leaping on whatever comes by.. Remember also that the ooths of one female laid in fairly close proximity may well have different fathers, so even there, there is not likely to be pure sibling mating.

Until we have hard research, then and some poor graduate student doing multiple genetic analyses, my guess is that there is probably very little introduction of fresh genetic material in an allotropic community (otherwise it wouldn't be allotropic, would it!) but that the often markedly different maturation times of true (sharing both parents) siblings appears to prevent or limit their interbreeding.

Whatyathimk?

 

[guapoalto049]

No, I think that your points are well made. The whole concept of IGM strains where a captive strain is interbred for generations tends to support your belief that "interbreeding of mantids is not as bad as some think" Christian Schwartz, our one-time mantis guru was a strong advocate of the belief that it is not a problem. The tendency of the males of so many species, though, to mature much earlier than the females -- many of us have watched in despair as our poor old male gets more and more senile while waiting for a dilatory sister to give him his Big Moment, seems to suggest that nature favors non brother-sister crosses as does the fact that males will travel quite long distances (and your guess as to what a "quite longs distance" is, is as good as mine). to mate instead of leaping on whatever comes by.. Remember also that the ooths of one female laid in fairly close proximity may well have different fathers, so even there, there is not likely to be pure sibling mating.

Until we have hard research, then and some poor graduate student doing multiple genetic analyses, my guess is that there is probably very little introduction of fresh genetic material in an allotropic community (otherwise it wouldn't be allotropic, would it!) but that the often markedly different maturation times of true (sharing both parents) siblings appears to prevent or limit their interbreeding.

Whatyathimk?

That's a good point that I forgot to bring up! There may be different fathers for the first half of the ooths than the last half, etc. I typically try to mate mantids from different ooths, for timing purposes and in case there are some negative effects of breeding "true" siblings.

I'm also glad you brought up the "quite a long distance" line. While male mantids can fly, I don't see them being strong enough in the air to travel a distance over a 1/2 mile. As you said we need some concrete scientific work.

Many Mantidae that I have kept seem to have no problems with the female maturing fast enough. The Hymenopodidae seem to have the most sexually dimorphic maturation times (not to mention size difference) so perhaps mantids in these families benefit more from "new blood" than others?