Mantis
Mantis Temporal range:
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Mantis religiosa , Romania
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Insecta |
Superorder: | Dictyoptera |
Order: | Mantodea Burmeister, 1838 |
Families | |
See text | |
Synonyms | |
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Mantises are an order (Mantodea) of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks. Their elongated bodies may or may not have wings, but all Mantodea have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey; their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, has led to the common name praying mantis.
The closest relatives of mantises are
Mantises were considered to have supernatural powers by early civilizations, including ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and Assyria. A cultural trope popular in cartoons imagines the female mantis as a femme fatale. Mantises are among the insects most commonly kept as pets.
Taxonomy and evolution
Over 2,400 species of mantis in about 430 genera are recognized.
Phylogeny
External
Evolutionary relationships based on Evangelista et al. 2019 are shown in the cladogram:[13]
Dictyoptera |
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Internal
One of the earliest classifications splitting an all-inclusive Mantidae into multiple families was that proposed by Beier in 1968, recognizing eight families,
Cladogram of | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Fossil mantises
Mantises are thought to have evolved from cockroach-like ancestors.
- †Baissomantidae
- †Gryllomantidae
- †Cretomantidae
- †Santanmantidae
- †Amelidae
- Incertae sedis:
Similar insects in the Neuroptera
Because of the superficially similar
Biology
Anatomy
Mantises have large, triangular heads with a beak-like snout and
Mantises have two spiked, grasping forelegs ("raptorial legs") in which prey items are caught and held securely. In most insect legs, including the posterior four legs of a mantis, the
Mantises can be loosely categorized as being macropterous (long-winged), brachypterous (short-winged), micropterous (vestigial-winged), or apterous (wingless). If not wingless, a mantis has two sets of wings: the outer wings, or tegmina, are usually narrow and leathery. They function as camouflage and as a shield for the hindwings, which are clearer and more delicate.[23][27] The abdomen of all mantises consists of 10 tergites, with a corresponding set of nine sternites visible in males and seven visible in females. The abdomen tends to be slimmer in males than females, but ends in a pair of cerci in both sexes.[23]
Vision
Mantises have
As their hunting relies heavily on vision, mantises are primarily diurnal. Many species, however, fly at night, and then may be attracted to artificial lights. They have good night vision.[34] Mantises in the family Liturgusidae collected at night have been shown to be predominately males;[35] this is probably true for most mantises. Nocturnal flight is especially important to males in locating less-mobile females by detecting their pheromones. Flying at night exposes mantises to fewer bird predators than diurnal flight would. Many mantises also have an auditory thoracic organ that helps them avoid bats by detecting their echolocation calls and responding evasively.[36][37]
Diet and hunting
Mantises are generalist
Most mantises stalk tempting prey if it strays close enough, and will go further when they are especially hungry.[43] Once within reach, mantises strike rapidly to grasp the prey with their spiked raptorial forelegs.[44] Some ground and bark species pursue their prey in a more active way. For example, members of a few genera such as the ground mantises Entella, Ligaria, and Ligariella run over dry ground seeking prey, much as tiger beetles do.[23]
The fore gut of some species extends the whole length of the insect and can be used to store prey for digestion later. This may be advantageous in an insect that feeds intermittently.[45] Chinese mantises live longer, grow faster, and produce more young when they are able to eat pollen.[46]
Antipredator adaptations
Mantises are preyed on by vertebrates such as frogs, lizards, and birds, and by invertebrates such as spiders, large species of hornets, and ants.[47] Some hunting wasps, such as some species of Tachytes also paralyze some species of mantis to feed their young.[48] Generally, mantises protect themselves by camouflage, most species being cryptically colored to resemble foliage or other backgrounds, both to avoid predators and to better snare their prey.[49] Those that live on uniformly colored surfaces such as bare earth or tree bark are dorsoventrally flattened so as to eliminate shadows that might reveal their presence.[50] The species from different families called flower mantises are aggressive mimics: they resemble flowers convincingly enough to attract prey that come to collect pollen and nectar.[51][52][53] Some species in Africa and Australia are able to turn black after a molt towards the end of the dry season; at this time of year, bush fires occur and this coloration enables them to blend in with the fire-ravaged landscape (fire melanism).[50]
When directly threatened, many mantis species stand tall and spread their forelegs, with their wings fanning out wide. The fanning of the wings makes the mantis seem larger and more threatening, with some species enhancing this effect with bright colors and patterns on their hindwings and inner surfaces of their front legs. If harassment persists, a mantis may strike with its forelegs and attempt to pinch or bite. As part of the bluffing (
Mantises, like
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Leafthorax.
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Adult femalethreat display, rearing back with the forelegs and wings spread and mouth opened.
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The jeweled flower mantis,deimatic displayto startle predators.
Reproduction and life history
The mating season in temperate climates typically takes place in autumn,[58][59] while in tropical areas, mating can occur at any time of the year.[59] To mate following courtship, the male usually leaps onto the female's back, clasping her thorax and wing bases with his forelegs. He then arches his abdomen to deposit and store sperm in a special chamber near the tip of the female's abdomen. The female lays between 10 and 400 eggs, depending on the species. Eggs are typically deposited in a froth mass-produced by glands in the abdomen. This froth hardens, creating a protective capsule, which together with the egg mass is called an ootheca. Depending on the species, the ootheca can be attached to a flat surface, wrapped around a plant, or even deposited in the ground.[58] Despite the versatility and durability of the eggs, they are often preyed on, especially by several species of parasitoid wasps. In a few species, mostly ground and bark mantises in the family Tarachodidae, the mother guards the eggs.[58] The cryptic Tarachodes maurus positions herself on bark with her abdomen covering her egg capsule, ambushing passing prey and moving very little until the eggs hatch.[4] An unusual reproductive strategy is adopted by Brunner's stick mantis from the southern United States: no males have ever been found in this species, and the females breed parthenogenetically.[2] The ability to reproduce by parthenogenesis has been recorded in at least two other species, Sphodromantis viridis and Miomantis sp., although these species usually reproduce sexually.[60][61][62] In temperate climates, adults do not survive the winter and the eggs undergo a diapause, hatching in the spring.[5]
As in closely related insect groups in the superorder Dictyoptera, mantises go through three life stages: egg, nymph, and adult (mantises are among the hemimetabolous insects). For smaller species, the eggs may hatch in 3–4 weeks as opposed to 4–6 weeks for larger species. The nymphs may be colored differently from the adult, and the early stages are often mimics of ants. A mantis nymph grows bigger as it molts its exoskeleton. Molting can happen five to 10 times before the adult stage is reached, depending on the species. After the final molt, most species have wings, though some species remain wingless or brachypterous ("short-winged"), particularly in the female sex. The lifespan of a mantis depends on the species; smaller ones may live 4–8 weeks, while larger species may live 4–6 months.[2][24]
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Mantis religiosamating (brown male, green female)
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Stagmomantis carolina laying ootheca
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Recently laid M. religiosa ootheca
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Hatching from the ootheca
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Sphodromantis lineola molting
Sexual cannibalism
Sexual cannibalism is common among most predatory species of mantises in captivity. It has sometimes been observed in natural populations, where about a quarter of male–female encounters result in the male being eaten by the female.
The female may begin feeding by biting off the male's head (as they do with regular prey), and if mating has begun, the male's movements may become even more vigorous in its delivery of sperm. Early researchers thought that because copulatory movement is controlled by a ganglion in the abdomen, not the head, removal of the male's head was a reproductive strategy by females to enhance fertilization while obtaining sustenance. Later, this behavior appeared to be an artifact of intrusive laboratory observation. Whether the behavior is natural in the field or also the result of distractions caused by the human observer remains controversial. Mantises are highly visual organisms and notice any disturbance in the laboratory or field, such as bright lights or moving scientists. Chinese mantises that had been fed ad libitum (so that they were not hungry) actually displayed elaborate courtship behavior when left undisturbed. The male engages the female in a courtship dance, to change her interest from feeding to mating.[68] Under such circumstances, the female has been known to respond with a defensive deimatic display by flashing the colored eyespots on the inside of her front legs.[69]
The reason for sexual cannibalism has been debated; experiments show that females on poor diets are likelier to engage in sexual cannibalism than those on good diets.[70] Some hypothesize that submissive males gain a selective advantage by producing offspring; this is supported by a quantifiable increase in the duration of copulation among males which are cannibalized, in some cases doubling both the duration and the chance of fertilization. This is contrasted by a study where males were seen to approach hungry females with more caution, and were shown to remain mounted on hungry females for a longer time, indicating that males that actively avoid cannibalism may mate with multiple females. The same study also found that hungry females generally attracted fewer males than those that were well fed.[71] The act of dismounting after copulation is dangerous for males, for it is the time that females most frequently cannibalize their mates. An increase in mounting duration appears to indicate that males wait for an opportune time to dismount a hungry female, who would be likely to cannibalize her mate.[69] Experiments have revealed that the sex ratio in an environment determines male copulatory behavior of Mantis religiosa which in turn affects the cannibalistic tendencies of the female and support the sperm competition hypothesis because the polyandrous treatment recorded the highest copulation duration time and lowest cannibalism. This further suggests that dismounting the female can make males susceptible to cannibalism.[72]
Relationship with humans
In culture, literature and art
One of the earliest mantis references is in the ancient Chinese dictionary Erya, which gives its attributes in poetry, where it represents courage and fearlessness, and a brief description. A later text, the Jingshi Zhenglei Daguan Bencao (transl. "Great History of Medical Material Annotated and Arranged by Types, Based upon the Classics and Historical Works") from 1108, gives accurate details of the construction of the egg packages, the development cycle, anatomy, and the function of the antennae. Although mantises are rarely mentioned in Ancient Greek sources, a female mantis in threat posture is accurately illustrated on a series of fifth-century BC silver coins, including didrachms, from Metapontum in Lucania.[73] In the 10th century AD,
Mantises are a common motif in Luna Polychrome ceramics of pre-Columbian Nicaragua, and are believed to represent a deity or spirit called "Madre Culebra".[76]
Western descriptions of the biology and morphology of the mantises became more accurate in the 18th century. Roesel von Rosenhof illustrated and described mantises and their cannibalistic behavior in the Insekten-Belustigungen (Insect Entertainments).[77]
In the early 1900s, people in the United States Ozarks region referred to them as Devil's horses.[78]
he [Geronimo the gecko] crashed into the mantis and made her reel, and grabbed the underside of her thorax in his jaws. Cicely [the mantis] retaliated by snapping both her front legs shut on Geronimo's hindlegs. They rustled and staggered across the ceiling and down the wall, each seeking to gain some advantage.[79]
M. C. Escher's woodcut Dream depicts a human-sized mantis standing on a sleeping bishop.[80]
A cultural
Martial arts
Two martial arts separately developed in China have movements and fighting strategies based on those of the mantis.[88][89] As one of these arts was developed in northern China, and the other in southern parts of the country, the arts are today referred to (both in English and Chinese) as 'Northern Praying Mantis'[90] and 'Southern Praying Mantis'.[89] Both are very popular in China, and have also been exported to the West in recent decades.[89][90][91][92]
In mythology and religion
According to local beliefs in Africa, this insect brings good luck.
As pets
Mantises are among the insects most widely kept as pets.[97][98] Because the lifespan of a mantis is only about a year, people who want to keep mantises often breed them. In 2013 at least 31 species were kept and bred in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.[99] In 1996 at least 50 species were known to be kept in captivity by members of the Mantis Study Group.[100] The Independent described the "giant Asian praying mantis" as "part stick insect with a touch of Buddhist monk".[101]
For pest control
Naturally occurring mantis populations provide
Two species, the Chinese mantis and the European mantis, were deliberately introduced to North America in the hope that they would serve as pest controls for agriculture; they have spread widely in both the United States and Canada.[104]
Robotics
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has produced a prototype robot inspired by the forelegs of the praying mantis, with front legs that allow the robot to walk, climb steps, and grasp objects. The multi-jointed leg provides dexterity via a rotatable joint. Future models may include a more spiked foreleg to improve the grip and ability to support more weight.[105]
See also
References
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External links
- Media related to Mantodea at Wikimedia Commons
- Data related to Mantodea at Wikispecies
- Mantis Study Group – Information on mantises, phylogenetics and evolution.
- Mantodea Species File