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Orthodera novaezealandiae
New Zealand's only native mantis. It is green with some yellow on the underside and in the wing. The main distinguishing feature is a bluish dot of colour on its inner foreleg. This dot is missing in the other species that occurs here. Hatchlings are miniature versions of the adults and grow through a series of moults to about 40 mm over a year. Males tend to be slimmer through the abdomen and slightly smaller.
Reasonably widespread throughout their range, in the north of New Zealand they have been supplanted by the introduced Springbok Mantis (Miomantis caffra) that became introduced in the 1970's. This is a classic case of an introduced species becoming dominant over a native species and threatening them. Sadly it happens all to often in New Zealand and elsewhere.
Some fun facts. The scientific name Mantodea comes from the Greek word for Prophet. The NZ mantis is an affective predator and is known to capture up to 25 flies a day so locally is often known as the 'Preying Mantis'.
Spotted on Mar 27, 2015
Submitted on Mar 28, 2015
17 Comments
Hi ForestDragon, yes I would be delighted to make an entry on this mission.
Robert
Thanks Ashley will work on it. In the mean time I will manually put a reference under the 'notes' section for those that are interested.
Please consider adding this beautiful spotting to the Marvelous Mantids of the World mission: http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/1573...
Not that I am aware of! I just switched to Firefox and didn't have any more problems
Thank you Venusflytrap2000.
Mark is not wrong Sergio. Many years ago I went to pick up an innocent looking Aussie cricket to move it from being squashed on a track. For my troubles I got a spine from its back leg stuck in my finger. The wound infected and my finger grew to twice its normal size and I was on antibiotics for a week!! Am now older and wiser :)
Hi Ashley, yes I do use Internet Explorer. Is there anyway around this issue apart from changing my system? Thanks for the help and advice.
Robert
fantastic!
Worse?... we have some very dangerous crickets.
So you Aussies and Kiwis throw crickets on each other? Well, it could be worst, some people use rockets and .50 bullets...
Sorry about the cricket Robert... believe it or not we were hoping NZ would win.
Are you using Internet Explorer? There tend to be many problems with references and adding missions if you use it. I use Firefox and have no problems! A few users have problems with Chrome, if they add a mission by mistake they can never remove it. Let me know if this is your problem!
Thank you for your comment Jill. I would be delighted to join this mission. If any Rangers are reading this, I would just say that the mission part of the site has caused me some problems. Generally when I join one the system tells me it doesn't exist (even though it obviously does) and when I make a spotting the only mission options it will give me is the last 5 that I have joined meaning that I have to delete some to get back to earlier missions to add them to my spotting. If anyone else has had this problem and has been able to overcome it I would appreciate a tip. Also the reference area is hard to work as my system keeps coming up with non recognizable.
Thanks for the comments Mark. Took an Aussie to get my little play on words! Well done on the cricket too by the way.
Robert
Nice shot showing the blue patch clearly. Please consider adding this to the mission Biodiversity of the North Island New Zealand http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/1527...
...preying mantis :-)
Very nice find. Ours have black patches inside elbows and are holding up well against the Springboks fortunately.