Lifespan of common mantis species?

[mndfreeze]

Hoping Dr. Caldwell can chime in here as I'm not finding much in the way of info on this. For the more common species kept by hobbyists, Peacocks, smithii, ternatensis, wennera, etc, what sort of life span do they have?

My Ternatensis lived roughly 3 years but as I had to rehome him during a move and my tank cracked, I dont know if he died of old age or something the new owner did. She was extremely capable and caring so I'm pretty sure it was the former, but it would be nice to know for mantis owners roughly how long they can expect.

I imagine with limited research on these guys we don't have a ton of data, but maybe you guys can all chime in with how long you've managed to keep your mantis alive before they keeled over?

 

[Gonodactylus]

There have been very few studies of how long any stomatopod lives in the field. One exception is my work on Neogonodactylus bredini and N. oerstedii. I and my students collected over one hundred thousand animals from the sea grass beds off the coast of Panama. We recorded the frequency with which animals of different sizes molted and how much they grew at each molt. (We measured the difference in length of the old and new carapace.) Using these data I was able to calculate how old animals at different sizes were.

After hatching larvee enter the plankton for 1 month before settling out at a total body lenth of 8mm.. At 6 months they are 15 - 18mm and after a year 25 mm. At two years females are reproductive and are around 35 mm. At three years they are around 40 mm, at 4 years 45mm. Few animals live longer than 4 or 5 years but we found a few that were over 50mm and were probably 6 or 7.

There is some fisheries data on the demographics of various squillids. They grow very fast and probably live only 2 or 3 years.

Lysiosquillina maculata are probably som of the longest lived stomatopods. I have followed burrows in the field in Hawaii for nearly 20 years and I have kept individuals collected as adults for 10 years so I would guess that Lysiosquillina may live 25 years or more.

Odontodactylus scyllarus is probably the stomatopod most commonly kept in aquaria but we have no data from the field and little information on how long they live in captivity. Since most peacocks are captured as adults we don't know how old they are when they are captured. My experience keeping O. scyllarus is that they typically live 2 - 4 years in the aquarium. If we assume that they are at least 2 or 3 years when captured, i would guess that they live a maximum of 6 or 7 years.

Roy

 

[mndfreeze]

Thanks Dr. Caldwell!

I think on my next Mantis, whatever species it ends up being, I'm going to try to get a smaller young one. Makes me wonder if perhaps having them in an aquarium from a young age they will do better than a wild caught adult already used to its environment being a certain way. I feel their intelligence is often underestimated as well as their sensitivity to environmental factors like choosing an ideal burrow vs making due with the best given to it, i.e. a pvc pipe vs a choice branching live coral head to chip out, etc.

 

[Vmazz]

Thanks Dr. Caldwell!

I think on my next Mantis, whatever species it ends up being, I'm going to try to get a smaller young one. Makes me wonder if perhaps having them in an aquarium from a young age they will do better than a wild caught adult already used to its environment being a certain way. I feel their intelligence is often underestimated as well as their sensitivity to environmental factors like choosing an ideal burrow vs making due with the best given to it, i.e. a pvc pipe vs a choice branching live coral head to chip out, etc.

With wild caught fish, they tend to be a lot more aggressive and have a harder time adjusting to their new environment. I would guess mantis shrimp act similar, maybe?