What do you say?

[Andrew]

Hearing you guys talking about ootheca absolutely needing a diapause to hatch makes me think of Sarracenia and Dionaea seeds. You will read that they need a cold diapause to hatch similar to religiosa, but they don't. You simply end up with a much lower germination rate.

I think if you took a few hundred to a few thousand M. religiosa oothecae, you would end up with quite a few nymphs. This supports Hypoponera's hypothesis that the trait was simply bred out, which is what seems likely to me.

 

[sidewinder]

I think if you took a few hundred to a few thousand M. religiosa oothecae, you would end up with quite a few nymphs. This supports Hypoponera's hypothesis that the trait was simply bred out, which is what seems likely to me.

Andrew,

I could agree with that, except that the evolutionary migration path for insects is from the tropics to temperate regions, not the other way around. Taking the data that Christian shared in regards to the various Mantis religiosa subspecies, I would posit that M. r. religiosa evolved after the first tropical M. religiosa subspecies. In other words, the diapause was an evolutionary adaption in the temperate subspecies, not the other way around. Hypoponera's hypothesis was made when we did not understand that there are many, including tropical, M. religiosa subspecies.

Scott

 

[Andrew]

Ahh, I gotcha. That's what I get for not reading through the whole thread.