Warm greetings from Berea, Durban.

During the recent Easter weekend we stayed at Wagendrift Dam cottage and we visited Giants Castle for the day.  During a slow ramble and not too far from Battle Cave I spotted one of my best little insects.  It was waiting in ambush on a yellow indigenous flower head as you can see from the photograph attached.

These little creatures are certainly most fascinating!  We got hooked on floral mantids about two years ago when we were taking photographs of bugs on flowers at the Alverstone Nature Reserve near Hillcrest.  And suddenly the bug was eaten by a mantid that was well disguised among the florets.  Once you have seen one of these bright little gems the regular green praying mantis seems so boring.  But….. look on the web for things like the Orchid Flower Mantid which occurs in Singapore.  It is the most amazing creature!

We have taken a number of photographs and even a short video clip also.  But, the subject was really camera shy and kept retreating from our attention…..

Just had a look at the photos of the flower mantid that apparently is in your garden on the Bluff. So, I thought that you might enjoy the yellow beauty that I found…..

Best regards

DAVE ELLINGER

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Below are some interesting facts and numbers about mantids:

`Getting to know the insect world’s “big cat”.

May 15 2006 at 02:29pm
By John Yeld

The San (people) worshipped them, some people are terrified of them – and Lauren Spearman loves them.

These are the mantids, of which the praying mantis is the best known and which features as /Kaggen, the most important spiritual figure in San mythology as the trickster deity with the ability to change itself into other kinds of animals.

Spearman, 29, is an American PhD student at Rutgers University who has just spent seven months in South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, researching mantids at six different sites of which two were in the fynbos region of the Western Cape: the Cederberg wilderness area and the Bontebok National Park near Swellendam.

Spearman says there are about 2 500 mantid species, of which just under 1 000 occur in Africa, far more than any other region.

“And when you look to South Africa, there are about 250 species, but that is not confirmed because the simplest questions – ‘What do you find, where?’ – have not yet been answered,” she says.

“And that is a big issue for insect conservation.”

For vertebrate conservation, the natural history of species like the panda and the tiger are “pretty well known”, she continues.

“But for insects, sometimes we do not know the simplest things: What do its egg cases look like? What plants does it prefer to be associated with? All those (are) really interesting questions that makes groups of insects specific to certain habitats.

“First, we just need to know what insects are where, and that is the struggle.”

Because mantids’ solitary nature made them difficult to collect and because they have never been considered a pest species, they have seldom been studied in the field.

Mantids are classified into their own order of insects, just like butterflies and moths are Lepidoptera and beetles (are) Coleoptera.

Contrary to popular opinion, stick insects are not mantids and also have their own order, although historically the two were thought to be closely related, says Spearman.

“Actually, they are not (related) at all. Mantids are more closely related to cockroaches. My husband (John, also an entomologist) loves to point out to me all the time that what I am studying are just fancy cockroaches!”

Mantids are solitary predators and feed only on other insects and spiders.

If they are big enough – some mantid species are 15cm or larger – and hungry enough, they will strike out at small mammals like mice or baby lizards or even small snakes.

“That has been documented,” says Spearman.

“So you should think of them like the big cats of the insect world that are going to hunt other things.”

Mantids are also superb mimics, with various species able to make themselves look like ants, bees, wasps, spiders, dry or green leaves, lichen-covered rocks, bark, twigs, quartz pebbles or even flowers.

“Mimicry is really important, for two reasons: they need to creep up on things that have very good vision, like flies, and also, while they are hunting or looking for a mate, they in turn are prey for birds and other creatures. So mimicry is critical for their survival.”

In some mantid species, the females are flightless, attracting flying males by the use of pheromones, “but we do not know yet how many of the species have this behavior.”

And, yes, the females do sometimes eat the males during mating, and they will eat their young as well.

“It does happen, but again we do not know in how many species that occurs.

“They are quite vicious – nature is not always friendly.”

Spearman fell in love with mantids while on a collecting trip to southern Africa four years ago with her adviser, a South African entomologist now working at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia where he is curator of the entomology collection.

A crucial part of her work while she was here was to curate the mantid collection at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.

At least half of the 2 000-odd specimens that she’s collected here and which she will be taking back to the US for identification – they have the largest mantid collections there, which makes identifying her specimens easier – will eventually be returned to this museum’s collection.

“Many insects are undoubtedly lost before we even know they existed.

“So collections like these are incredibly valuable for conservation, for biodiversity studies. It’s the foundation on which all these other questions can be answered.”

 jyeld@incape.co.za