Saturday, August 2, 2014

Reagan Molted and Sexing mantis

Reagan molted! She is beautiful. My pictures don't do her justice, she has little black speckles on her back that make her super pretty. Yes, I said she. That brings me to my next topic. Sexing (no not sexTing that is another subject all together lol) mantids.

The basic rule is females have 6 abdominal segments while males have 8. The final segment of the female is much larger than the others while the male has several small segments towards the end of the abdomen. You can also tell by the shape. A male is kind of stick shaped, one length all the way down pretty much. Females have a fat wide bottom. When they get their wings a males will be longer than the body and they fly about. Females have wings shorter than their whole body and they typically don't fly a lot, because they are usually too fat. Counting segments on baby nymph mantis are hard so I wasn't sure what we had. I am still not 100% certain, but....

Reagan appears to be female and I am pretty sure of that, but if I can't find one I'll mate all 3 with Reagan.based off segments and also the fact she is fat and wide now. I am almost 100% sure the 3 others are male. I will be on the look out for another female, to increase my changes of a higher number of fertile eggs
 Again sexing them is kind of hard at this stage, I haven't ever had this much trouble! I must be out of practice. We will see as they continue to molt, each should have at least one more molt. Possibly two. Will have to go look at pics in detail, but a few have wing buds now which means they should get their wings next molt. 





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