Talk:Mantis

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[edit] Merged with praying mantis?

I don't think this should be merged with Praying mantis. I think that Praying mantis should be merged with Mantidae. The reason it's in the current state that it is, is that when I stumbled on it, Mantodea and Mantidae either didn't exist or redirected to Praying mantis. I tried to clean up those, and just pasted in the front paragraph from this. If people who actually understand the taxonomy can fix it that would be great. Wikibofh 04:13, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How large are mantises?

How large are the largest and smallest species of mantises? If they can eat reptiles and mammals, then they must be pretty big, I would think. Someone please add this info. SpectrumDT 22:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

The longest mantid species is Ischnomantis gigas, from Africa. It can be up to 17 cm long!! However, this mantid species mimics sticks so it is quite slender. Other mantids species like those belonging to the genus Hierodula may be up to 12 cm long and their stout-built body makes them look massive (specially if it is a gravid female). The smallest mantid I have seen so far belong to the South American genus Mantoida (like M. luteola). They can be 1 cm. long! Small mantids are not uncommon and many genera includes some remarkable small species like in Mantellias, Bantiella, etc, etc, etc...

[edit] No mention of..

Mantis-style Kung Fu. Seeing as it was developed through years of observation of the mantes, it warrants a note. TKarrde 15:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, didn't see that. Good call. :) TKarrde 11:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Habitat

Some info on habitat and distribution would be appreciated 195.131.179.43 20:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mantidae/Mantodea

I think the pages should be merged as Mantodea is the order and Mantidae the family, so Mantidae is a part of Mantodea. I added the information on the largest and smallest mantids on the 'praying mantis' page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.34.181.254 (talk • contribs) 11:47, March 25, 2006

  • I disagree. If we do that, we lose the logical links to all the families under Mantodea that aren't mantidae. It's why it's a hierarchy. Wikibofh(talk) 14:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Well it's currently jolly difficult for the reader. Perhaps the rel'ship between the three articles Mantidae, Mantodea and Praying mantis could be made more overt. Currently the latter two seem to be in parallel. JackyR | Talk 01:51, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've looked again, and I exagerate, but a it is still confusing... JackyR | Talk 01:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
For me, I don't see the confusion, since I just look at the taxobox on the right. *shrug* Wikibofh(talk) 02:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

The relationship between the three articles (Mantidae, Mantodea and Praying mantis) and whether all three are needed is open to debate. But all Mantodea are praying mantids and all praying mantids are Mantodea. Is there any explanation for this not having been merged long ago? House of Scandal 20:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

  • The classic conflict between the decision to use the common name as a matter of style in wikipedia and the desire to make taxonomies non-insane. Wikibofh(talk) 20:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
  • ...and actually, all of Mantodea are not Praying mantis, although all praying mantids are of mantodea. That is why there are a bunch of families listed here other than Mantidae. Wikibofh(talk) 00:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Impending reorganization

I am preparing to finally go ahead with merging the text from the Praying mantis article into this article, since the two are treated as synonymous, and much of the information redundant. "Praying mantis" will become either a simple redirect to Mantodea, or a disambiguation page that lets readers choose whether to go to Mantodea, or directly to Mantis religiosa. I'm inclined to go the former route, since it seems to be a more common usage to consider ANY member of the order to be a "praying mantis". If this is of concern to you, the place for expressing opinions is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arthropods#Mantid/Mantis/Mantidae/Mantodea/Praying Mantis. Dyanega 18:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cannibalism in reproduction

It cannot be claimed that cannibalism of male mantids by females occurs naturally in the field, as it may also be caused by a distraction in normal courtship behaviours, by the human, whether in the field or lab. The only paper since Liske and Davis i know of was by Lawrence in 1992, but the evidence for natural cannibalism in the field was not convincing. For example, a decrease in the male population relative to females occurs in many insect species, not because of cannibalism but because they disperse in search of females so face other hazards. Is there a later paper more convincing to prove it occurs naturally in the field?--Lauriec 02:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other species

It seems this article is focused solely on praying mantises, even though the opening sentence states, "The order Mantodea (which includes the praying mantis) consists of approximatively 2,300 species, of which a majority are in the family Mantidae." Is there any information on the insects in the other families? All those articles seem to be one-line stubs. howcheng {chat} 16:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

I guess I never got around to this, and it's long overdue. The situation is simple enough: ALL members of the order are "mantises". Only members of the family Mantidae are "mantids". The term "praying mantis" is used by lots of people to refer to any sort of mantis - not restricted to any one family, or any one species, in its colloquial use. But, this colloquial use is horribly sloppy and confusing, and ideally should be discouraged, especially since there IS one species - the European mantis, that DOES use "praying mantis" as its common name. That particular conflict is going to be impossible to resolve to everyone's satisfaction except through the use of dablinks. All that being said, the first step is eliminating the existence of "praying mantis" as a stand-alone article, and converting it to a redirect here to Mantodea, because the generalized colloquial use, though woefully inappropriate, is far more common than the restricted use of the term for just the European mantis. The reverse idea, of merging Mantodea under praying mantis, is a far worse alternative because it promotes the sloppy overgeneralized use of "praying mantis" - which is technically and scientifically undesirable. Dyanega (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger finalized

It turns out that "mantis" was only a dabpage, so I moved its content to Mantis (disambiguation) and turned Mantodea into a redirect. That results in the smallest possible number of redirect links. Hopefully this will be satisfactory enough that no one will feel compelled to undo it. Dyanega (talk) 01:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

To facilitate tracking, here are links to the "orphaned" article/talk histories created by this move and merge:

Mantodea article history Mantodea talk page history Praying mantis article history Praying mantis talk page Praying mantis talk page history

Dyanega (talk) 18:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)