This is one that I’m faintly frustrated at only having captured once. First featured 9 years ago but actually taken 14 years back, it looked to me like a cross between a lacewing and a praying mantis – which is largely what it is. It’s a member of the Mantispidae, or mantisflies, possibly a green mantisfly (Zeugomantispa minuta.) While the praying mantids that we’re all familiar with have wings as adults and can indeed fly, they aren’t very closely related at all; mantisflies are Order Neuroptera, while mantids are Order Mantodea. This means that the similarity in appearance in only coincidental, a case of convergent evolution – but boy, do they look similar. Except for the size, since my adult specimen here is somewhere in the vicinity of 10mm, while adult Chinese mantids get a lot closer to 80mm. Back in 2010 I wasn’t half as well set up to do detailed macro work as I am now, so naturally I’ve been wanting to tackle the same species again when I can do a better job, but I’ve never seen any sign of them since.
I might have missed an opportunity, though. While researching the various species, I stumbled upon a photo that looked quite familiar, almost identical in fact to something that I’d captured earlier – which may mean that I had an entire egg cluster hatch within easy reach and never knew that it was a target species. That year (2013,) however, was one that I was extraordinarily active with arthropod photography, so I feel reasonably comfortable that I was performing due diligence in watching for the adults – I doubt that I could have found one if I’d been more alerted to their presence. Tracking the newborns in their life cycle would have been virtually impossible, given that they were a mere millimeter in length when born and soon dispersed. Back then I was likely mistaken as to what they were, so even capturing a few and trying to keep them in a terrarium wouldn’t have been successful because I would probably have been trying feed them the wrong stuff – the larvae feed on spider eggs, and Bubble Yum has been discontinued for a while now.
[Actually, no it hasn’t – might have to go to the store later on today, get some nostalgia.]