Not a Tater Tot - It's a Chinese Mantis Ootheca

For Throwback Thursday, I thought I'd share what a Chinese Mantis ootheca (OH-uh-THEE-kuh), the other (probably most commonly seen) praying mantis ootheca looks like. A couple days ago I showed you what I believe to be a Carolina Mantis ootheca. (While I'm still leaning towards that being a Carolina Mantis ootheca due to it's tear-drop-like shape, apparently the non-puffy shape and the stripes are also field marks for the Narrow-winged Mantis, making it harder than I thought to identify a Carolina Mantis ootheca. [Since Chinese Mantises and Narrow-winged Mantises are in the same genus while the European Mantis and Carolina Mantis are merely distant cousins, I expected the Narrow-winged Mantis to have an ootheca much closer in appearance to the Chinese Mantis, but this webpage indicates otherwise.])

Anyways, it appears that the puffy oothecas that are shaped more like a tater tot can reliably be considered to have come from a Chinese Mantis, since the Narrow-winged Mantis, European Mantis, and Carolina Mantis all have oothecas that are much longer than they are wide. And so we can confidently assert that the mantis that was in the process of creating this particular ootheca was definitely a Chinese Mantis.

Though I see lots of Chinese Mantises and lots of oothecas, I believe this is my only picture of an ootheca actually being produced.

September 24, 2019 at Duke Farms
Photo 53144009, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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