Ghana praying mantis
| Ghana praying mantis | ||||||||||||
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Portrait of a female Ghana praying mantis ( Sphodromantis lineola ) in yellow color |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Sphodromantis lineola | ||||||||||||
| ( Burmeister , 1838) |
The Ghana praying mantis ( Sphodromantis lineola ) is a fishing insect from the Mantidae family . The popular species is often kept as a terrarium animal.
features
The Ghana praying mantis is a relatively large, robustly built fishing insect. Like all representatives of this order, it has a triangular head and an elongated prothorax . The color of the species varies between yellow, green and brown and can be adjusted depending on the habitat during molting. Between the complex eye and the antenna there is a so-called secondary ocular hump, typical of the genus Sphodromantis , which is absent from the similar genus Hierodula , for example . The inside of the tentacles has a yellow warning color. In the event of a threatening gesture, these are held up to a potential attacker while the wings are also opened. The fishing rodent defends itself only in an emergency with bites or the thorny tentacles.
Similar to other mantis, there is also a pronounced dimorphism between the two sexes in the Ghanaian praying mantis . The female reaches a body length of about 90 millimeters, in addition it has a strong, broad body with only six segments. Its short wings, which do not extend beyond the abdomen, mean that it can only fly a few meters. Here, too, the male remains shorter with a body length of a good 60 millimeters, is much slimmer than the female and has eight segments. It also has longer wings and can therefore fly successfully.
Occurrence
The Ghana praying mantis is found in West and East Africa as well as parts of Central Africa and Southern Africa. It prefers the steppe vegetation , where it climbs on higher bushes or can be found in the branches of trees.
Way of life
As with other fishing horrors, the Ghana praying mantis is a hunter camouflaged in its habitat and often remains motionless. The Ghana praying mantis feeds on carnivore like other mantis. Other arthropods of the appropriate size can be used as prey . The prey is first pursued in crawl, as is usual with catching horrors and, as soon as the prey comes within range, grabbed with the thorny tentacles and eaten in seconds.
The Ghana praying mantis, like the related African giant mantis ( Sphodromantis viridis ) from Egypt and some other species, has also been observed to eat pieces of fruit in the terrarium. It has not yet been clarified whether this is about real food intake or just the intake of fluids, or whether it is an idle act in eating behavior.
Reproduction
Like the other species of the genus, the Ghana praying mantis reaches the adult stage after the tenth molt, but the actual sexual maturity does not occur until the female after two weeks and the male after three weeks. Sexually mature females secrete pheromones that are intended to attract males willing to mate from a greater distance, which then seek out the females in flight. During copulation , which lasts six to 18 hours , cannibalistic behavior occasionally occurs . But that is very rare in nature; Under terrarium conditions, the risk can be reduced if only well-nourished females are mated. The female forms up to eight semicircular, up to 40 millimeters large and dark to brown oothecae that can contain 70 to 300 eggs. The first ootheek is laid about four weeks after mating, the others follow at an interval of two to four weeks. The hatched young feed on smaller prey, such as fruit flies , springtails , aphids and their own conspecifics and are six millimeters in size after hatching. The females reach a lifespan of about 11 months, the males one of eight months.
Keeping in the terrarium
Due to its robustness and ease of care, the Ghana praying mantis, like other species of the genus, is a popular terrarium animal and is often kept as such.
Enemies and parasites
Praying mantises are parasitized by certain types of flies , hymenoptera, and string worms. Like the string worms, the insect maggots can penetrate the body of the praying mantis or the oothecae and live in them as parasitoids . Infestation with maggots from the caterpillar flies (Tachinidae) was observed in the Ghana praying mantis . Among the string worms, there are the species Chordodes ferox and Chordodes madagascariensis from the group of horse hair worms that have been observed as parasitoids of the Ghana praying mantis.
Systematics
There are three subspecies.
- Sphodromantis lineola lineola (Burmeister, 1838), the type specimen comes from Sierra Leone
- Sphodromantis lineola pinguis La Greca, 1967, the type specimen comes from La Maboke, Central African Republic
- Sphodromantis lineola speciosa La Greca & Lombardo, 1987, the type specimen comes from Morogoro, Tanzania
photos
Larva with a captured cricket
Ghana mantis head
Male (green) and female (brown)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Claudia Heßler, Ingrid and Rudolf Bischoff: Mantiden - Fascinating Lauerjäger . 2nd corrected and enlarged edition. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-930612-45-1 , pp. 103-107.
- ↑ a b Description and husbandry report of the Ghana praying mantis on M&M Wüst ( Link )
- ↑ a b Description and husbandry report of the Ghana praying mantis on DahmsTierleben ( Link )
- ↑ Reinhard Ehrmann: Mantodea: Gottesanbeterinnen der Welt . NTV, 2002, p. 32.
- ↑ Reinhard Ehrmann: Mantodea: Gottesanbeterinnen der Welt . NTV, 2002, pp. 34-35.
literature
- Claudia Heßler, Ingrid and Rudolf Bischoff: Mantids - Fascinating watchers . 2nd corrected and enlarged edition. Edition Chimaira, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-930612-45-1 .
- Reinhard Ehrmann: Mantodea: praying mantises of the world . NTV, 2002 ISBN 3-931587-60-6
Web links
- Sphodromantis lineola at www.dahmstierleben.de
- Video: Sphodromantis lineola (Mantidae) - prey catching behavior . Institute for Scientific Film (IWF) 1993, made available by the Technical Information Library (TIB), doi : 10.3203 / IWF / E-2896 .