Praying Mantis - porch gaurdian and your friend

 Watch out for these two lovely ladies and more almost just like them over the next few weeks!  

 

 

These are my ‘door guardians,’ a pair of praying mantises, one from the front door and one from the back porch.  I am fairly certain these are two different species but are in the same family.  They are wonderful beneficials being un-picky predators on flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, crickets, and just about anything sizable enough that they can catch.  And yes, they do significantly reduce the populations of these nuisance, health, and household pests, and much more where they can be found.  Some of their most preferred habitats are front porches, horticulture sites near human structures, and other set human made structures where the pest ‘traffic’ is high, and the structures are fixed.  The structures offer them protection from weather and the pest traffic offers a reliable food source.  Humans have a very high chance of running into them, especially since our homes, sheds, well houses, and barns attract insects of every kind.  Especially in drought years on the High Plains like this one with our structures, gardens, and yards being the only reliable source of shade or water freely available to insects.

                Preying mantises only have one generation per year so it can be very easy to disrupt their survival carelessly.  The mantis population in the area has recently, is currently, or is about to lay their eggs.  Mantid eggs are lain in a ‘group structure’ called an ootheca.  Mantids love to lay these oothecas on the structures that provided them good locations for protection and near good food sources.  These oothecas are often misidentified as they can be odd looking, foreign, alien even with a touch of scary on the first encounter.

 

 

                However, if these are destroyed, smashed, or otherwise seriously damaged, the eggs will be damaged, and the next generation of mantises will not be so quick to help defend your home from those pests.  Personally, I wait until after they hatch in the spring if I can before painting or repairing any portion of my structures if an mantid’s ootheca is attached.  I love to sit on the porch and watch my door guarding praying mantises eat the moths that are attracted to my porch light and my wife even likes checking up on them often.  

I hope you will join me in keeping these awesome beneficials around.  I think you will like the reduction in pests on your porch too. 

Blayne