The Species That Saved Me

Chapter 8: Odontomantis micans

I want you to think about irony. What is something ironic, the MOST ironic thing, you can think of? For me, it's the fact that one of the smallest mantises I've worked with needs a great deal more space than some of the largest ones. Mantises in the genus Odontomantis reach a body length roughly the length of your fingernail. No, they're not as WIDE as a fingernail, rather they're very diminutive. However, they'll die in small containers.

I have a thing for tiny mantises. I prefer the smaller species in fact. Not only do the smaller species have some of the coolest coloration/cryptic colorations (google Harpagomantis tricolor for me and tell me how big you think that insect is), but they're generally much easier to accommodate. Not only do they take up significantly less space per insect (ok Odontomantis are the exception but biology is the queen of exceptions among the sciences), they eat significantly less food. A female Odontomantis needs 1 or 2 flies to produce about 30 eggs, whereas something like Polyspilota aeruginosa needs tens of large roaches, crickets, etc to do that same task. And the egg of Odontomantis is MUCH larger proportionally to the adult size. 

Odontomantis is a fairly neurotic mantis. While they are relatively small, even as adults, they are incredibly active and small cups should be avoided! I use net cubes and put about 25-30 nymphs in each, with a wide range of surfaces for them to clamber upon. The eggs are laid in a light yellowy brown (almost the color of a pancake) colored ootheca that's roughly the size of a raw kidney bean. A female Odontomantis will live roughly 6 months and lay 3-5 oothecae per month, with younger and better-fed females laying more frequently. The ootheca incubates for about a month, and then up to 30 long, thin, ant-like hatchlings emerge. In most of the Odontomantis, the nymphs are pitch-black ant mimics for roughly 4 instars, and then the last 2-3 (females have 1 extra instar) instars the insect becomes more greenish, with the arms and legs turning green first. The nymphs take roughly 3 months to reach adulthood (most mantises spend 2-4 months in the nymphal stage, although some of the empusids we'll cover later in this chapter can take over a year to reach maturity), and they need only a few days to be ready to mate. 

Odontomantis act very much like roaches instead of mantises, which is quite unusual given how derived the Hymenopodidae tend to be. In the Jurassic, mantises and roaches diverged from a common ancestor. The earliest mantises like Metalyticus and family Chaeteessidae are very clearly roach-like, with very flattened bodies and roach-like copulation (back to back instead of mounting). As mantises became more advanced (diverse), the newer groups (including the Hymenopodidae) trended towards non-roach like traits such as having a sturdier but more lanky body plan and more general body flexibility, as well as a general trend away from colonial living. Most (but not all) roach species are adapted to living in large groups, some to the extent where they'll refuse to breed in too small a colony. Many cockroaches emit short-lived aggregation pheromones to signal to other roaches that they've found a suitable living space (anyone who's ever kept roaches probably sees that some species even if they escape the bin, they tend to stay fairly close to their colony, like within a foot or 2 of the bin), whereas these aren't known in mantises. While roach newborns or hatchlings have a desire to group, most hatchling mantises aren't interested in being near one another. It seems as though (at least in captivity), Odontomantis have reclaimed a few different roach-like behaviors.

A lot of young mantises mimic ants to some extent. Many species hatch out with very red or black bodies, which are superficially like ants. However, Odontomantis take ant mimicry to another level. They look a lot more like ants than most other things (although several Acanthopidae genera have very convincing ant mimics, like Acontista and Raptrix), and they act like ants. Not only do they hold their abdomens flat rather than curved, they move around a lot. Ants aren't sedentary, and neither are some of their most convincing mimics. Hopefully by now, some of this makes sense to you. Odontomantis aren't large because neither are ants. Odontomantis run around a LOT and thus need a bit more food than other mantises of that size because ants are kinda the same way.