| ABSTRACT Mantises can live for many months, are naturally voracious, and feed invariably on live prey. Many species have a propensity for cannibalism and cannot be kept together for most of their life cycle, which makes large-scale rearing typically time-consuming, thus easily becoming prohibitive. This is particularly true for early instars, because they are the most abundant stage of a developmental cohort. Such limitation hinders research on Mantodea which depend on live individuals, such as behavior, physiology, ontogeny, and others. In this work, a simple, low-maintenance “self-service” device is described, which is greatly effective in reducing the time needed for keeping live, individual, small to medium-sized mantises. Trial and error usage and... |
