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Dryinidae
Is this the smallest mantis in the world? Can anyone identify it? I was fishing this Sunday on the banks of the Itabapoana River (ES, Brazil), under a chestnut tree, when I noticed this little guy walking on my arm. At first glance it was just another one of those tiny heart-shaped gaster black tree ants, very common around here, but no. It is certainly the kind of ant that our little friend here wants to mimic (genus Crematogaster or equivalent) but, looking closer, I noticed the triangular shape of the head that was not so common. Looking a little closer came the surprise! I had to bring it to my house and photograph the find. As you can see, it is no more than 3mm in length and is certainly already an adult. Unfortunately part of the right antenna is missing.
State of Espirito Santo, southeastern Brazil.
100% cropping in the second image. Even my macro lens did the job! :)
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@Leonardo Castro
if it was the Asian Ant Mantis (Odontomantis planiceps)... i would had recognised it straight away as i see them very often around my garden.! ;)
https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/26...
Looking again I can't help thinking that very pointy abdomen is so waspish and not so mantid. ;-)
I also noticed some very similar around our parts too so something to look for.
Wonderful nature.
Thank you so much, Mark. Yes, it's a gem!!
Just out of curiosity, a Malaysian version of what I expect to have here (link below). Lots of similarities (compare to my picture 3), but looking closely we actually notice incongruities that distinguish the two.
Still, in any case, the similarities are unsettling!
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/world-sm...
Fantastic spotting LC. Thanks for sharing and thank you Richard for ID direction. What a little gem.
Thank you all for the support. Really.
Oh... what a disappointment, Richard!...
Adopts mantis posture by gathering its grasping forelegs and aiming the target directly with its big eyes, but it is not a mantis (image 3). It has a triangular head with special eye layout and jaws (although not very clear in the images) just like a mantis, but it is not a mantis (image 4). It has "false pupils" exactly identical to the ones we see in mantis, but it's not a mantis ... (image 4 and 5).
I still think it's an ant-mantis-mimic solitary wasp :) and I think she fooled me with this super ingenious outfit!
Thank you very much for helping me with this intriguing puzzle.
not a mantis but an ant-mimic solitary wasp in the family Dryinidae (distributed worldwide)... and seems to be a female as females of most spp. are wingless and usually have a chelate foretarsus for grasping the host bug during oviposition. antennae are 10-segmented.!
Nice one, Leonardo. You must have a keen eyesight :)
I have no idea which species this is, but perhaps it is one in the Dryinidae family.
Maybe its an ant pretending to be a mantis? But really, this is a tough one and I'm no ant or mantis expert. The eyes on this insect are very un-antlike and I do see that the forelegs are enlarged and folded back, too. I hope you decide to go fishing there again and find more of these.
Thanks for commenting, Gary17. I have other photos from my essay. They were not very good because the equipment was not suitable for such dimensions, but I managed to get them back. Hope they serve to reinforce my hypothesis. I just included them in the spotting.
A tough one. But if this is a mantis shouldn't it have enlarged grasping forelegs? The eyes and head shape remind me of a mantis though.
In my searching so far I've found the Odontomantis genus, but it seems this one is from Asia only (https://besgroup.org/2016/10/20/myrmecom...). Would there be an equivalent genus of Brazil, perhaps? And if my specimen is an adult, its closest Asian version (Odontomantis) is much larger. It really puzzled me...
Spotted on Aug 18, 2019
Submitted on Aug 18, 2019
