Do praying mantises preferentially hunt near flowers?

Praying mantises are voracious predators that can exert top-down effects on local communities (Moran et al. 1996), yet little is known about how they choose a foraging site. Mantises are often found resting on or near flowers, and flowers may be an important resource; mantises fed diets supplemented with pollen had greater mass than those that were not (Beckman et al. 2003), and females found on plants in flower had greater fecundity than those found on plants not in flower (Hurd 1989). Are mantises randomly arriving at flowers, or are they actively searching them out? Flowers provide both visual and volatile cues to potential pollinators, and mantises may be 'eavesdropping' on these cues as indicators of a rich prey source. Mantis vision is well studied, but little is known about mantis olfaction. Using electro-antennograms and behavioral observations, we show that the antennae of the Chinese mantis respond to floral odors. Cage studies, however, suggest that they do not preferentially hunt near flowers. Several factors, including local prey abundance and species-specific differences, may determine if and when mantises seek out flowers as hunting sites, and future studies will examine these factors. Understanding how mantises choose a hunting site and whether they eavesdrop on floral cues will lead to a deeper understanding not only of mantis ecology, but also of interactions within the community of plants, predators and prey.