A team of JCU scientists have discovered and named three new 'leaf-planking' praying mantis species and recorded another mantis species turning up far from its assumed habitat.
JCU PhD candidate Matthew Connors recently discovered and named three new Snake Mantis species from the Kongobatha genus(K.serpens, K.spinosistyla and K.rufilinea), publishing his detailed observations of each species in the journal Zootaxa.
"They're quite small and delicate and they've got these very nice, almost glossy wings," said Mr. Connors.
The new mantis species are all referred to as 'leaf planking' mantises and predominately live in upland and lowland habitat north of Townsville, in North Queensland.
"Leaf planking is a behavior that only a couple of mantis species from around the world have," Mr. Connors said.
"They have this special organ right on their chest that is a sensory thing, and it helps them flatten themselves down really nicely against a leaf, so that they're really hard for a predator to see."
Mr. Connors also discovered another species (K.papua), previously seen only in Papua New Guinea, finding it living happily and abundantly in the lowland rainforests and wet sclerophyll forests north of Cairns.
"This genus has very much been neglected. Prior to this study, we had only one species in this genus in Australia," Mr. Connors said.
"As it turns out, there are actually four Australian species."
One of the new mantis species - the Southern Snake Mantis – was also found living in suburban backyard gardens of Australia's urban cities.
"They seem to have adapted really well to living with humans," said Mr. Connors.
"They're found in people's gardens in the suburbs around Brisbane and Sydney … they're very common.
"Citizen scientists really helped me to get a full idea of the distribution of this species."
Mr. Connors explained that the best way to distinguish between species of mantis is to look at where they're going to be mating from and the species-specific structures there.
"Male genitalia in mantises are often quite different between species. On the very end of the abdomen most mantises will have these structures called Styli," he said.
"The pattern and number of spines on the styli are unique between the species. It's a really easy way to tell them apart … but obviously you have to look quite closely.
"In one of our new species, there are up to 60 spines crammed in on the surface of this structure … no other mantis species in the world has these types of structures."
Mr. Connors explained that mantises play two major roles in the environment - as predators and as prey.
"They're carnivores, they eat all sorts of other insects and a mantis this size would be eating flies and probably mosquitoes as well," he said.
"They're a great source of food for birds, bats, larger insects and potentially lizards. They form an integral part of that food chain.
"Now that they've been named and we've shown them to the world, we can get to work on protecting them and working out how important they are to the ecosystem."
