Lysiosquillina lisa male portrait

Gonodactylus

Gonodactylus

Premium Member
This is the largest of the L. lisa males to arrive this week. They were rescued from a fish market in Indonesia. This male is just over 13 inches, the largest ever reported for this species.

I want to thank Psychodave for alerting me to these animals and Aquarium Concepts for their help in acquiring them. If you aren't used to dealing with large stomatopods, an animal armed like this one can be a bit intimidating. Hey, even I decided to use a net.

Roy
5463L_lisa_male_1a_small.jpg
 
Dr. Roy, if you could describe your photographic setup, I'd appreciate it. Whenever I try to take pictures through glass or acrylic, I seem to lose critical focus and have significant chromatic aberration. My guess would be that this was done with a moderately stopped-down macro lens?

Dan
 
While I usually use film, this shot was taken with a Nikon D200 and a Nikkor AF Micro 105 2.8D shot at ASA 100 and F22. I use manual focus, twin SB 800 with TTL spot metering. The stobes are mounted at about 45 degrees to the face of the tank and I shoot through a piece of black poster board mounted over the lens to eliminate reflections. Also the room is only dimly lite edges around the tank are mask with black gaffers tape to reduce glare. Finally, for really sharp photos, I use a photographic tank with the front made from single thickness window glass. Even then, it is important to shoot perpendicular to the glass. The thicker the glass and the more oblige you are to it, the worse the image.

Roy
 
Thats a much better picture! That guy, I think was the one in the corner tank, took a nice slash at the bag as he was being put in the tank. The teeth on his spear looked really nasty, like they could take your arm right off!
 
lol, i agree with Dan, you really do go through a lot for those photos. I suppose it's worth it though to get such great shots! That specimen looks stunning.
 
That guy is certainly beautiful. Those spears are certainly intimidating. I wouldn't want to get stuck with one of them, that's for sure.

So, I've been noticing, what's the relationship between body and eye size in Mantids? Why do some seem to have extreme disproportionate ratios between the body and eye? This guy's eyes look so small in relation to his body, whereas my peacock for example looks to have much larger eyes in relation to her body?
 
The relative size and shape of the eyes to body length is related to the ambient light environment in which the animals live and the mode of hunting and attack. All of the odontodactylids have very large globular eyes and they all live in relatively low light environments - 15-40 m. O. cultrifer, O. japonicus and O. hawaiiensis live even deeper than O. scyllarus and their eyes are even larger. In this group the size of the relates to how much light can be gathered. In very deep living stomatopods such as Bathysquilla, there is little or no light and the eyes are very reduced.

Spearers tend to have eyes that are concave and stretched on the dorsal - ventral axis. This produces a peanut shaped eye that has excellent parallax. The eye seems to have evolved to maximize information coming from above and straight in front of the animal which makes sense for a concealed sit and wait predator. (Note that the female Lysiosquillina that do not hunt have greatly reduced eyes.) In pursuit or actively foragaing predators such as gonodactylids and odontodactylids, they eye has broader coverage of the surrounding world. Depth perception is achieved throught tilting the ommatidia inside the eye, not via a concaved surface.

Roy
 
Thanks Dr. Roy! Their eyes are really fascinating.

What you explained makes a lot of sense. I should've already have known why the odontodactylids have larger eyes. It's much like nocturnal creatures and birds of prey.
 
Are there any side effects to such heavy flash usage in relation to the sensitivity to the eyes? F22 is the sweet spot for a lot of SLR lenses but requires such heavy lighting. Thanks.
 
We don't have much problem with bleaching the eyes with and occasional strobe shot with the exception of a few nocturnal species and I haven't noticed that shooting at F8 produces any different behavioral effects than F32. Usually I need all of the depth of field I can get, so I really pump out the light.

High speed video is a different ball game. The light needed to film at several thousand frames a second causes major problems (both from light and heat).

Roy
 
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