Friday 28 March 2014

Idolomorpha dentifrons, Saussure & Zehnter, 1895

Here's a game for you.

Tell me what this is.

(Nymph) Photographed in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia in December 2013, using Olympus E-420 DSLR, 40-150mm Zuiko lens and 3 KOOD magnifiers.

As a hint, the Chewa/Nyanja words include Mdulamphuno, Mdulamphiko and Kalandamfuno, according to my lovely dictionary (Amazon stocks it, click to see) and the Afrikaans is Bidsprinkaan.




A second hint - although the photograph is at its natural angle, you might find the animal easier to make out if you tilt your head ninety degrees to your right...




One final hint - it's featured in a fantastic post by Piotr Naskrecki (blogging God of Entomology that he is), here.



In fairness, that's less a hint than a dead giveaway. It is, in actual fact, a Praying Mantis - specifically:

Idolomorpha dentifrons
Saussure & Zehnter, 1895

And the whole animal looks more like this: 
 
Photographed in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia in December 2013, using Olympus E-420 DSLR, Zuiko40-150 lens and 1 KOOD magnifier.
 
 

And no, by the way, I haven't forgotten to rotate the image. This late-instar (i.e., nearly adult) nymph spent the bulk of its time walking at right angles to the ground - which would look significantly less awkward if its prothorax wasn't so ridiculously long...

Like most mantises, it's a voracious predator of other small invertebrates, but when you're human sized, it's about as harmless as harmless comes. So fear not the mdulamphuno. 

 With that, we may as well explore the taxonomy: 


- Idolomorphini   
- Empusinae           
- Empusidae             
- Mantodea                 
See also Sibylla.
- Dictyoptera                       
- Anartioptera                         
- Polyneoptera                           
- Neoptera                                       
- Metapterygota                                    
See also Enallagma cyathigerum, Pseudagrion hageni, Lestinogomphus angustus and Rhyothemis semihyalina.
- Pterygota                                               
- Dicondylia                                                
- Insecta                                                        
- Hexapoda                                                     
- Arthropoda                                                     
- Ecdysozoa                                                         
- Protostomia                                                         
See also Burtoa nilotica.
- Nephrozoa                                                              
- Bilateralia                                                                 
- Eumetazoa                                                                   
- Animalia                                                                         
- Eukaryota                                                                           


And that's all, folks!


You may recall that I wax lyrical about the Orthoptera Species File whenever I feature an African grasshopper. Well, it has a baby! It's called the Mantodea Species File, and just at the moment it's still teething, but it's AWESOME!

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