Tanzanian Mystery Mantis

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Hey guys. My friend sent over a picture of the ootheca from which this nymph was hatched. There is no doubt this is not a Mantis religiosa ooth.

mystery%20ooth.jpg


 
MantidLord said:
Really? Looks pretty M. religiosa like to me...
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Yea I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I saw the picture and instantly thought "oh M. religiosa" then read you think it's certainly not and realized one of us is very wrong.

I'm sticking to my guns, religiosa all the way. In another instar or so you should be able to see the signature bicep tattoos, if you can't already.

 
Domanating said:
The black marks under the forearms are only visible once it reaches L5 so it might take a while.
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I had Europeans as young as L3 with the marks. I can show you an L4 with them today (same guys, they molted over the weekend). I'm pretty sure every Euro I've ever had was L3 when the markings appeared but I didn't pay much attention to it so I'm a little fuzzy on if there were exceptions that young.

 
soundspawn said:
I had Europeans as young as L3 with the marks. I can show you an L4 with them today (same guys, they molted over the weekend). I'm pretty sure every Euro I've ever had was L3 when the markings appeared but I didn't pay much attention to it so I'm a little fuzzy on if there were exceptions that young.
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Interesting, I never had a Religiosa having their marks prior to L5

Here's my only L5 showing the black marks for the first time

d6d7e23d-454c-4660-a912-84866835b849.jpg


 
Ok guys. I'm putting $1000 of Monopoly money on the table that this is *not* M. religiosa.

Here is an adult female M. religiosa placed next to the Mystery Mantis ootheca. It's a far stretch to believe these girls could produce an ooth of this comparative mass.

religiosa-and-mystery-ooth.jpg


 
Oh wow, geez that's huge!

In the first pic there was no possible way to tell the size. Well then, I have nothing further to say XD

 
The body shape looks like M. religiosa to me. Out of the experience I've had with raising M. religiosa, I am almost certain that this is what it is.

What I see is odd though is that the black eyespot on the inner side of the foreleg appears to be absent in the first photo. It would be unusual for M. religiosa to lack the eyespots because every individual I've seen had an eyespot whether or not it was black with a white center or just solid black.

Mind you that I've only seen them in the wild in Ontario, Canada so I do not know what differences they may have in other parts of their range in different parts of the world.

 
Hmm...that ooth size is troubling...unless the African sub species are gigantic...I'm retracting my opinion that it's M religiosa.

 
SkittishMale said:
What I see is odd though is that the black eyespot on the inner side of the foreleg appears to be absent in the first photo. It would be unusual for M. religiosa to lack the eyespots because every individual I've seen had an eyespot whether or not it was black with a white center or just solid black.
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As Soundspawn and I mentioned above, young Religiosas do not have the black marks yet. I have only seen them getting those when they reach L5 but it appears they can have them at an earlier instar too.

Edit:

I do however failed to acknowledge that the mystery mantis is L2 and if you look at the pic I posted in the 1st page of two L2 Religiosas, the sizes and proportions don't match at all. The difference in head size compared to the elongated thorax is a pretty obvious discrepancy.

The mystery mantis has closer proportions to a L5 or L4 Religiosa. So big ooth, big L2 nymph. So clearly not Religiosa after all.

Even though Digger mentioned again and again that it was a L2 nymph I still failed to realize that for some reason, lol

 
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Domanating said:
Would it possible that these early black marks show because they skip molts? I never kept a Religiosa skipping one but some claim it happens.
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Only if every European I had skipped a molt from different ooths at different times... so I doubt it. Oh and several are adult now so I have the whole molt history with no "missing instar"

 
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The size comparison between the ooth and the adult religiosa is indeed raising some eybrows here..

African religiosa's are not always bigger than their European counterpart, some are actually smaller. The variation in size and body proportions is however quite spectacular, I'll see if I can find one of my old pictures again from museum specimen collected in central Africa.

Unless your friend is pranking you that ooth seemed to be laid by something the size of a Plistospilota.

 
We need Dracus.

Vlodek said:
Hello Digger,
It's most likely Ischnomantis fatiloqua. That's what my nymphs look like.
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As Vlodek says, maybe something like a Ischnomantis. Do you have any pictures?

http://mantodea.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1184500

A skinny Solygia (Do not know what Solygia means in Latin or Greek) makes a thick ooth. agentA posted photos:

http://mantidforum.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=29198&hl=solygia

But this mantis in the photo does not look colossus maybe because it is one of the smaller species (on bugguide the Ischnomantis gigas is 17cm long. Scientific name = "slender mantis" "giant" I think):

http://www.ispot.org.za/node/192866

 

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