Ordinary mantis: habitat, color, photo

Ordinary mantis is an insect belonging to the family of true mantises. This is the most common representative species in Europe.

Description

This is a fairly large insect. An ordinary mantis, whose sizes range from 42 to 52 mm (males) and from 48 to 75 mm (females), is a predator. He has the forelimb adapted to hold his food. Praying mantis is part of a squad of cockroaches, forming a numerous species, consisting of three thousand subspecies.

The name was given to him by Carl Linnaeus - a great systematist who noticed that the panting posture, when he is sitting in ambush, is very similar to the man who folded his hand in prayer. Therefore, the scientist called him Mantis religiosa, which translates as "religious priest".

Coloring

Probably, according to the school textbooks of biology you are familiar with an ordinary mantis. The type of its color is very variable, ranging from yellow or green to dark brown or brown-gray. Usually it corresponds to the habitat, coincides with the color of grass, stones and leaves.

The most common is green or white-yellow color. The old individuals have a fainter outfit. On the body with age, there are dark brown spots. This is due to the fact that the production of life-important amino acids: methionine, leucine, tryptophan, etc. ceases in the body. Under laboratory conditions, when these substances are added to the feed, the life of the insect almost doubles - up to four months. This is the maximum period that an ordinary mantis can live.

Biological features

These insects have well developed wings, they fly well, but the males move this way, only at night, and during the day they allow themselves to occasionally flutter from branch to branch. The mantis has four wings. Two of them are dense and narrow, and the other two are thin and wide. They can open like a fan.

The head of the mantis is triangular in shape, very mobile, connected with the breast. It can rotate 180 degrees. This insect is well developed forepaws, which have powerful and sharp spikes. With their help, it grabs its victim, and then eats it.

The photo of the mantis ordinary, which you can see below, clearly demonstrates that this insect has well developed eyes. It is distinguished by excellent eyesight. The predator, being in ambush, monitors the environment and immediately reacts to moving objects. He approaches the prey and grabs it with strong paws. After that, the victim has not the slightest chance to survive.

Unlike males that feed on fairly small insects, heavy large females prefer their fellow men of the same, and sometimes larger size, than they. An interesting story related to the female praying mantis was told by E. Teal. He observed an amusing situation on the street of one of the cities of America. The traffic was stopped. The drivers watched with interest the duel between the sparrow and the mantis. Surprisingly, an insect won the battle, and the sparrow had to retreat from the battlefield in disgrace.

Photo of the mantis mantis, habitat

Praying mantis is widely distributed in the south of Europe - from Portugal to Ukraine and Turkey. He did not pass by the islands of the Mediterranean Sea (Corsica, Balearic, Sicily, Sardinia, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Malta, Cyprus). It is often found in Sudan and Egypt, in the Middle East from Iran to Israel, on the Arabian Peninsula.

The mantis habitat of the mantis also covers the southern regions of our country. Presumably introduced to the east of the USA, to New Guinea, in the 1890s. From these territories, he settled almost all of America and the south of Canada. At the very beginning of this century, the mantis was discovered in Costa Rica. There are no officially confirmed data that the mantis ordinary was found in Jamaica, in Australia and Bolivia.

In Europe, the northern border of the range passes through such countries and regions as Belgium and France, Tyrol and southern Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, southern Poland and Slovakia, the forest-steppe regions of Ukraine and southern Russia.

Scientists note that at the end of the XX century the area began to expand to the north. The number of these insects significantly increased in the north of Germany, an ordinary mantis appeared in Latvia and Belarus.

Features of reproduction

I must say that the mantis male has a difficult romantic relationship: a female, bigger and stronger, can easily eat an unfortunate fiancé, especially when she is not ready to mate or too hungry. Therefore, an ordinary mantis (male) takes all precautions.

Marriage period

Noticing the fine half, the male begins to creep toward her much more cautiously than to the most dangerous and sensitive prey. His movements do not catch the human eye. There is a feeling that the insect does not move at all, but gradually it comes close to the female, while striving to come from behind. If the female at this moment turns in his direction, the male freezes in place for a long time, while rocking slightly. Biologists believe that these movements are a signal that switches the behavior of the female from hunting to love.

Such a rather peculiar courtship can last up to six hours. On this appointment the gentleman is better to be a little late, than for a minute to hurry. Propagated mantis ordinary in the very end of summer. On the territory of Russia, their mating takes place from mid-August to early September. The influence of sex hormones provokes an increase in aggressiveness in the behavior of an insect. At this time cases of cannibalism are not uncommon. The main feature of an ordinary mantis is the devouring by the female of the male after, and sometimes during mating.

There is a version that the male praying mantis can not copulate, if he has a head, so the sexual act of insects begins with an unpleasant procedure for the male - the female tears off his head. However, more often mating occurs without sacrifice, but after its completion the female eats a male, and even only in half of the cases.

As it turned out, she eats her partner not because of her special vampirism or harmfulness, but because of the great need for protein in the first stage of development of eggs.

Offspring

An ordinary mantis, the photo of which you can see in this article, lays eggs in ootheki. This is a special form of deposition, characteristic of mollusks and cockroaches. It is a horizontal series of eggs, which can be two or more.

The female pours them with a foamy protein substance, which forms a capsule upon solidification. As a rule, up to 300 eggs are laid. The capsule is distinguished by a rather firm structure, which easily adheres to plants or stones, protecting the egg from external influences.

Inside the capsule, the optimum humidity and temperature are maintained. In ootec eggs can not die even at temperatures down to -18 ° C. In temperate latitudes eggs hibernate, and in the southern regions the incubation period is a month.

Larvae

Thirty days later, larvae appear from the eggs. On their surface are small spines, which help them to get out of the capsule. After this, the larvae moult. Later they dump the skin and become like adults, but without wings. The larva of the mantis is very mobile, it has a protective coloring.

In most regions of the distribution of these insects, the larvae hatch in late April-early May. For two and a half months they molt five times. Only after that they become adults insects. The process of puberty is two weeks, then the males begin to search for their second half for mating. Mantis live in natural conditions - two months. First, the males die. After mating, they no longer seek prey, become very sluggish and quickly die. They live only until September, and females survive them for a month. Their age ends in October.

Lifestyle and diet

The basis of the mantis diet is insects. The largest individuals (mostly females) often attack lizards, frogs and even birds. The ordinary mantis eats sacrifice slowly. This process can last about three hours, and during the week the food is digested.

Praying mantis is difficult to call an amateur for hiking. Only by the end of the summer, the males are fundamentally changing their way of life: they begin to wander around the area. Faced with his brother, the insect enters a fight, and the loser has a chance not only to die, but also to become a dinner for the defeated rival. Of course, in these travels male mantises are not looking for tournament glory, they need the love of a beautiful female.

The mantis habitat is a tree or shrub, but sometimes they can die on the grass or on the ground. Insects move from the stage to the tier, so they can be found both on top of the crown, and at the foot of a tall tree. And another interesting feature: the mantis responds solely to moving targets. Objects immovable to him are uninteresting.

This predator is very voracious. The adult insect eats up to seven cockroaches a centimeter in size at a time. The victim consumes about thirty minutes. At first he eats soft tissues, and only after that starts hard. The mantis leaves limbs and wings from the cockroach. The softer insects are eaten whole. Usually a mantis prefers a settled way of life. When he has enough food, he lives on one tree throughout his life.