Appearance: this beautiful mantis has lobed legs and abdomen enabling it to blend in with a lush environment easily. Its base colorations are green stripes and blotches that cover the insect. It also has a distinct “#9” spiral in yellow on top of its wing.
Sexing: Females grow up to 4 cm long while males stop at 3.5 cm. After the 3rd molt, 8 segments can be counted on the male’s abdomen while 6 on the females. This could be quite difficult since the segments are camouflaged and lobed, but if you look underneath, the male will have 6 center lobes (or spikes), 1 more than a female’s 5. And in adults, the female's side lobes protrude beyond the wings while the male's is hidden by the wings.
Accommodation: this species of mantis require a bit of extra heat. It’s best to keep it around 30 C (86 F). A heat mat or heat lamp is may be used to maintain the desired temperature. Keep the temperature cooler at night to lengthen the lifespan of the mantis. Warmer temperature speeds up the metabolism of the mantis and will shorten its life span…and in contrast, cooler temperature slows its metabolism and lengthens the life span, but both extremes could kill it. Keep humidity at a constant 70-80%.
Caging: their cage should be well ventilated with lots of twigs and leaves for the mantis to perch on. They are a tropical species and would fare will with plenty of foliage. These mantises don’t require much room as they are not active predators, but they do need room to molt. The suggested height is usually 3x the mantis’ length and 2x for the width. This species is not as vicious as other species, but nevertheless, they will fight in small containers so it’s not advised to keep more than one in each container.
Feeding: this species actively prefers flying insects. Start out with fruit flies for nymphs and move to small crickets for larger nymphs and moths, mealworms, wax worms, and other flying insects for sub-adult and adults. Even though they are voracious and will attack anything, do not offer them poisonous insects or wasps or bees as these could seriously harm the mantis. To feed them, you must stimulate them to eat. This species does not go after its prey, but rather wait for the prey to come to it…or you can feed them by hand: use a pair of tweezers to hold the insect and shake it quickly in front of the mantis, if it’s hungry, it will snatch it from the tweezers. I have found a successful way to get these to eat non-flying insects: I attach the prey item to a string and I dangle it in front of the mantis making it look like a flying insect…then once the mantis has snatched up the prey, I cut the string lose from the prey. And if neither trick works, you can pierce the prey and squeeze a little bit of juice out and put the juice into the mantis' mouthparts and let it taste it...if it likes it, it'll grab onto the prey. This trick could take several tries. They are very prone to overfeeding so watch the food intake and stop feeding them if their abdomen is getting too large. As for watering, this type will get its fluid from its food, but it can sometimes be seen drinking off droplets from the side of the cage.
Molting: a mantis will stop eating a few days prior to its molt. Mantises molt about every 2 weeks as babies and the time in between each molt increases as they get older…so their last molt into adulthood can sometimes take as long as 3-4 weeks. It takes about 7 molts for females and about 6 for males. That’s why males tend to mature earlier than females and they also die faster. To pair up a pair of male and female, speed up the growth rate of the females while slowing down the males’ with cooler temperature and less feedings…once the female has molted, speed up the male’s growth to molt him out. During molting, it is vital that you do not disturb them and also make sure that the humidity is at a safe level…mist the insect frequently before its molt to prevent any blockade. The mantis will hang upside down from a branch or the screen lid and will sometimes shake or spasm violently. Then after a while, it worms out of its old skin and will hang out to dry. Once it’s dried, it will resume eating and being its normal self. I've never had a bad molt with this species, but maintain the humidity level higher than normal during molting time to ensure a healthy molt.
Reproduction: this species can be easy to breed. After 2 weeks since their last molt, introduce the female into the male’s enclosure near him. It would be best to mate the mantids after 3-4 weeks instead. 2 weeks may be too soon and may shorten the female’s lifespan. This would attract his attention and he’ll try to make his move. It could take hours before he does anything though. Or you could feed the female and during her feeding, put a male behind her and if he is ready, he will jump on her back and hold on for dear life. As she is busy with eating, she can’t grab him or throw him off of her. After a while of holding on (this could take from hours to days), the male will bend his abdomen down to connect with hers and mating will commence. Afterwards, he will run away and he must be removed or else he’ll be eaten.
Ootheca: after a week or so, the females will be making her first ootheca. This species can lay around 6-12 oothecae. After 6 weeks of incubation at 30 C (86 F) and 70-80% humidity with an occasional misting, 40-60 nymphs will hatch out. These can be fed on fruit flies a day or two after hatching. Then continue to care for them as this care sheet suggests.
Additional Notes: I’ve experienced this species to be vulnerable to fungal infections. It causes a forelimb of the mantis to rot or fall away. A clean enclosure could solve this problem. I’ve also noticed that these mantids are very picky eaters. They refuse crickets, hard mealworms, and wax worms. There are a few ways to solve this problem if moths and other flying insects aren’t available: one is to use the string method and dangle the cricket or mealworm around the mantis and catching its attention, the second method is to hand feed it soft insects using tweezers to put the injured food in its mouth. Newly molted mealworms were always a favorite of mine…but they don’t really like wax worms so don’t bother trying them. Well fed adult females only lived for a little bit over a month before becoming exhausted and died. The males of this species are very timid. A mounted male can take over 2 days before copulating with the female.
The hatchlings come out black with white spots with antennas that has a lump at their bases. They are about 7 mm and are very fragile. A good half of them died naturally and the remaining nymphs should thrive with care. I’ve found that fruits flies may be large for them and could scare the nymphs away a few times before they become hungry enough to attack it. However, they readily tackle large fruit flies (drosophila hydei) as soon as their first molt.
Their first molt takes place about 10 days later and the larger nymphs come out tannish, but turn back to black soon after. They start eating LOTS of flies and are constantly hungry. They are about 1 cm long when well fed.
Their 2nd molt comes in as little as 7 days. The nymphs now display “spikes” on their abdomen and show signs of green stripes on their arms and legs although they are still black. Sex determination is now possible. The males have one more spike at the end of its abdomen due to their extra segments. They continue to eat flies like no tomorrow and are already showing signs of aggression. The first act of cannibalism occurred with a late bloomer nymph was partially eaten by its larger sibling. I will be separating them into individual containers after their next molt to prevent any more cannibalism. Newly molted nymphs are very fragile and 3 died of mysterious causes.
It's taken about 14 days between the 5th and 6th molt for the females. I've suspended the males' growth by giving them a lot less food than the females.
The females' last molt took a little bit over 3 weeks. They're now sporting long wings and will be fully mature in a couple of weeks.
I've successfully mated the first female after 2 weeks and the male after 11 days and completed the whole life cycle. _________________
These shots are amazing.. _________________ “Look down at me and you see a fool;
look up at me and you see a god;
look straight at me and you see yourself.”
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