Sexual dimorphism

[chrisstpeter]

Among my 3 L2 S. carolina. nymphs, I am noticing quite a big size difference! I got all three of them as L1s (as far as I could tell), and their size was fairly uniform. And even after their first molt the other week, they were still more or less the same size, with Charlie being slightly larger. Now however, Charlie is HUGE compared to the others! I haven't seen any evidence of a second molt, but she is definitely a lot bigger. I'm guessing that this means she is a female and the other two are male? Does sexual dimorphism usually manifest this early on?

 

[Rick]

I normally don't see any difference until the later instars. Every now and then though I get an individual that is much larger or smaller than its siblings.

 

[chrisstpeter]

Hmmm, that's interesting. I tried sexing them as best I can (still kinda hard to count segments at this size), but as best I can tell, the two smaller ones have more segments than Charlie (the big one), and she definitely only has six. Probably just a coincidence then that my female is the biggest one Thanks Rick!

 

[happy1892]

That is strange. I looked at over twenty of my Stagmomantis carolina L1 and L2 and L3 nymphs and as L1 and L2 they had 8 segments and at L3 some had 6 segments and some had 8. I think at L4 they start to have obvious differences. Right now I had a male L4 nymph that is much bigger than the others and the rest of the L4 females and males are about the same size. I wonder if this big male will have one less molt than the other males. I have 9 Stagmomantis carolina out of around 40. They would not eat. I have to figure out how to keep them in a net cage well. I think it was because there were not enough hiding spots that let them die but 4 of the L1 nymphs I put in a 32oz deli container with no hiding places ate very well.