Litaneutria Minor - Life Cycle

Life Cycle

L. minor is a solitary species and like most other praying mantises will only come together to mate. Mating times for this species are highly dependant upon weather conditions and prey availability. Typically females are most likely to accept a mate and have a successful clutch two weeks after their last molt.

Male ground mantids will detect a female by following a pheromone released by a sexually mature female. Once a male has located a female, he slowly approaches her, being sure to distinguish himself as a mate and not a prey item, and mounts the female. L. minor is an extremely aggressive species and the female may sometimes mistake the potential mate for prey, and attack and eat the male. Once successfully on the back of the female, the male L. minor will bend his abdomen down, attaching his spermataphore into the female's spermatheca. Canabalism during mating can be observed in many different species of mantids (usually 6-30% of the time) and Litaneutria minor is no exception, with nearly all females eating the male's head during mating. This unusually high percentage of cannibalism during mating is not common in most mantid species.

Two weeks after mating, the females lay egg cases known as ootheca on twigs and branches. The ootheca is 5–10 millimetres (0.2–0.4 in) long, with each ootheca containing 10–20 eggs. The eggs lay dormant over winter, and if they survive, nymphs will start emerging from the ootheca in early spring. Females will molt approximately 7 times, with their terminal molts being in mid to late summer. Males will molt only 6 times and will have a terminal molt mid to late summer also. Nymphs and juveniles spend all spring and early summer catching as much prey as possible and growing.

Adults reach sexual maturity in late summer and will mate as soon as they are sexually mature. Females begin laying eggs in late summer and early fall, and will continue to do so until both they and the males die out during the fall months. Only the fertile eggs last the winter, with the next generation emerging the following spring.