- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What a perfect camouflage!
Have you ever seen a green praying mantis hiding among the green growth in your garden?
Concealed. Disguised. Camouflaged.
The praying mantis is a patient insect. It will lurk for hours in its familiar prayer-like position, ready to ambush passing prey, usually an unsuspecting insect like a honey bee, bumble bee, sweat bee or grasshopper. Then with a movement faster than you can say "What the..." it will strike, grabbing its prey with its spiked forelegs. The target, unable to escape the deadly grip, becomes its meal. No catch and release here!
There's a reason why many folks have never seen a praying mantis. It's like trying to find Waldo, especially when the mantis is camouflaged in the vegetation and lying motionless.
Wikipedia tell us that the mantids, in the order Mantodea, comprise more than 2400 species and about 430 genera in 15 families worldwide. Some 20 species occur in North America, according to entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Author of The Handy Bug Answer Book, Waldbauer writes that the introduced Chinese mantis is the largest "at a length of asmuch as four inches."
Some praying mantids have been known to catch hummingbirds, and you know how quick hummers are. See a photo published by National Geographic and watch a scene on YouTube.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Who doesn't love a praying mantis?
Certainly not a butterfly or a bee.
We humans, though, are fascinated by them. First, there's the problem of finding them. Often they're so camouflaged that we don't see them until they rustle the leaves and snatch a moving prey. An accidental shot of water from a sprinkler or faucet also will prompt them to emerge.
Lately we've been seeing a light brown praying mantis hiding in our fading lavender. At night it sleeps one stem over from the row of male longhorned bees, Melissodes agilis. The female bees return to their nests at night, but the males sleep on stems. (Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, calls this "The Boys' Night Out.")
Despite its proximity to many food sources, we've never seen this particular praying mantis catch or eat anything.
Maybe this is why: A biologist named Linda who lives in Groningen, the Netherlands, wrote this on her "Keeping Insects" website:
"A praying mantis won't eat a few days before it will shed its skin (molt). This is normal. After molting it will start to eat again. When a praying mantis will not eat even though it does not need to molt, it can help to offer it a different prey species. Do not worry too much, a mantis can live for 2 weeks without any food."
Molting? Sure enough. The next time we spotted the praying mantis, we also saw his discarded skin.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But how can you sleep when you sense a predator in your midst?
Last night, as usual, was Boys' Night Out in our lavender patch. The male longhorned digger bees, Melissodes agilis (as identified by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis), were sleeping on a lavender stem, as the females nested underground.
The males cluster or "roost" or "camp out" on the stems from around 6 at night until 7 in the morning, and it's a sight to see. A veritable bedroom community. Our lavender patch is a living room during the day and a bedroom at night.
Curiously enough, the males are very territorial in daylight hours as they compete for the females. We've seen them dive-bomb carpenter bees, bumble bees, sweat bees, butterflies, dragonflies and the males of their own species.
But even though they battle fiercely during the day, they sleep together peacefully at night.
Lately the roosting males seem to be vanishing. We're accustomed to seeing 12 to 15 on a stem. It's dwindled down to eight or nine. Where did they go? Did they find another place? A better "bed?" More room at the inn?
So at 6:30 a.m. today, we parted the lavender stems to observe the boys. Not as many as yesterday.
Wait, what's that? Could it be? It was. A praying mantis!
And the praying mantis, looking quite emaciated, was edging toward the sleeping boys.
Easy pickings. Too easy. Would it grab one of them?
It did not.
It climbed down the lavender stem, peered at the sleeping boys--hmm, breakfast?--and then moved to another lavender stem.
Close call? Maybe. Maybe not. We've heard that praying mantids prefer moving prey and these prey weren't moving.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
At the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 1 to 4 p.m., at the University of California, Davis, you'll see not one, but two, praying mantids.
And very much alive.
Doctoral candidate Fran Keller collected one, and the other is the one I collected last Saturday when it was preying on a monarch butterfly. (When I lifted the struggling monarch from the lantana, the praying mantis came attached.)
That was five days ago. For her dining pleasure, I have offered "my" praying mantis one cabbage white butterfly, one skipper butterfly, five live crickets, and six wiggly mealworms. We know she is a "she" because she's quite pregnant. But ahem. Someone in my household (no names specified here to protect the guilty) thinks the terrarium she occupies is a "torture chamber." When I popped in a cabbage white butterfly, Mrs. Praying Mantis and Mrs. Cabbage White Butterfly slept side-by-side all night, an inch apart, and then the next morning, Mrs. Praying Mantis ate her.
For breakfast.
Heartily.
She left only the wings.
Hey, as butterfly expert Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, says: "A praying mantis has to eat, too."
Now Mrs. Praying Mantis is renting quarters, having bed and breakfast, at the Bohart Museum. I assume she is quite happy with her surroundings and is quite pleased with her menu, which I'm sure includes cabbage whites (pests).
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, assures me that Mrs. P.M. (that could stand for Pest Management!) cannot fly even if she wanted to. "She's too heavy," she said.
There's a twig in her terrarium for Mrs. P.M. to lay her eggs--if she so desires. I'm not sure she desires.
But, back to the open house. Theme of the open house (free and open to the public), is "Live at the Bohart!" And that includes Mrs. Praying Mantis, aka Mrs. P.M. The venue: Room 1124 of thee Academic Surge building on Crocker Lane, formerly California Drive. Although the Bohart houses nearly eight million insect specimens from around the world, it also has a "live" petting zoo that includes Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, a rose-haired tarantula and an elusive jumping spider (that came in as a visitor on a bouquet of roses and subsequently became a permanent resident) and a “Harry Potter bug” (which is an amblypygid commonly known as a whip spider or tailless whip scorpion).
The real attractions this Saturday, however, will be cabbage white butterflies and Gulf Fritillary butterflies: museum officials will tell you how to rear them.
I imagine Mrs. Praying Mantis will concentrate quite heavily on the movements of the cabbage white butterflies and the Gulf Fritillaries.
Waiter! Will you hurry, please? I'm hungry.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It happened so quickly.
The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) fluttered to the lantana for a sip of nectar when the unexpected happened.
A praying mantis, lying in wait, leaped high and grabbed it by its wings.
Unable to fly, the monarch struggled to right itself. The praying mantis kept its viselike grip.
Caught.
At the time, I was focusing on the butterfly and didn't see the predator. When I saw the butterfly struggling, I walked over to it and lifted it out of the lantana, only to find a praying mantis attached to it.
The butterfly did not make it. The praying mantis, a female about to lay eggs, did. She will be shown at the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 1 to 4 p.m. and then released.
Theme of the Bohart open house is "Live at the Bohart!" Live? That's because the open house will feature live insects, such as cabbage white and Gulf Fritillary butterflies, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks, a rose-haired tarantula and a “Harry Potter bug,” which is an amblypygid commonly known as a whip spider or tailless whip scorpion.
The Bohart, located on the UC Davis campus in Room 1124 of Academic Surge on Crocker Lane, formerly California Drive, is home to nearly eight million insect specimens, collected throughout the world.
At the open house, museum officials will tell you how to rear a cabbage white butterfly and other butterflies, such as Gulf Fritllaries. You can talk insects with director Lynn Kimsey; senior museum scientist Steve Heydon; public education/outreach coordinator Tabatha Yang, and others. The gift shop will be open for the purchase of t-shirts, jewelry, posters, books, insect nets and other items.
As for the praying mantis, on Saturday she will be freed to catch more prey.
Let's hope it is a cabbage white instead of a monarch.
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