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The orchid mantis exhibits high ontogenetic colouration variety and intersexual life history differences

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Abstract

Masquerade, the resemblance of animals to inedible or inanimate objects, exists universally throughout the animal kingdom, especially in arthropods. However, masquerade has received little attention from biologists and is often misinterpreted as mimicry by the public and even by scientists, as a consequence of the lack of systematic biological information for masqueraders. Therefore, using the orchid mantis Hymenopus coronatus (Insecta: Mantodea), a classic masquerader, as the study species, we asked: (1) what is the population abundance and life cycle? (2) whether it closely coexists with specific plant or not? (3) how its colour morph changes across life stages? and (4) whether and how the key environmental factors affect its life cycle? Results suggested that the orchid mantis (1) had an extremely low wild population abundance; (2) did not coexist with specific plant; (3) exhibited colour morph diversity; (4) might match its reproductive and nymph developmental period with local seasonal fluctuations of temperature and precipitation. We then compared its life history differences between the two sexes. The results indicated that the two sexes can be remarkably different in development duration, growth rate, lifespan and body weight. This study is the first systematic investigation of the orchid mantis; the results provide useful natural history data for ecologists and evolutionary biologists to understand the adaptive strategies of elusive appearance of masqueraders.

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Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments, Yunhong Tan, Renbin Zhu, Lilan Wang, Guangyu Liu, Yingjiao Yu, Qiwu Duan, Guijuan Wang, Jiangbo Zhao, Jianfang Yi, Dong Li, Jinpeng Wan, Liqin Wang, Qing Liu, Fuchuan Wu, Shuhong Zhang, Yushu He, Lanlan Qu, Haibo Mo, Hong Jiang, Chengzhi Wang and others for identification of plant species and assistance in data collection, Xiyuan Ni and Nanwei Yi for housing the orchid mantis, and Zhaopeng Jing for measuring the area where field orchid mantis records were collected.

Funding

This work was supported by the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2021000018), the Ten Thousand Talent Plans for Young Top-notch Talents of Yunnan Province, China (No. 20200000099) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970425).

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Author notes

  1. Xin Zhao and Jing-Xin Liu have equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yunnan, China

    Xin Zhao, Jing-Xin Liu & Zhanqi Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xin Zhao

Authors
  1. Xin Zhao
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  2. Jing-Xin Liu
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  3. Zhanqi Chen
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Contributions

JXL, XZ and ZC designed the experiments. XZ and JXL collected and analysed data. XZ, JXL and ZC wrote the original manuscript. JXL, XZ and ZC revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhanqi Chen.

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Zhao, X., Liu, JX. & Chen, Z. The orchid mantis exhibits high ontogenetic colouration variety and intersexual life history differences. Evol Ecol 37, 569–582 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-023-10230-y

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