1

Numbers in the drawing: look here to identify it

  1. Gray to gray-brown body, hard to spot on tree trunks

Mantises of the world

Balderson's tree-trunk mantis

Ciulfina baldersoni

On tree trunksLeft- and right-handed malesKorean name is a provisional translation

A small mantis whose males come in two forms, with genitalia twisted to the left or to the right, in nearly equal numbers.

Scientific name
Ciulfina baldersoni
Family
Nanomantidae
Body length
Small mantis (measurements being checked)
Range
Hervey Bay and Bundaberg area, Queensland, Australia
Range
Trunks of thin, smooth-barked trees with few branches

What kind of mantis is it?

It lives in a small area of Queensland, Australia, in small populations that don't move around much. It isn't well known to the public, but it's known for research on how it mates.

How to identify it

  • Gray to gray-brown body, hard to spot on tree trunks.
  • Male genitalia are asymmetric, left or right.

Look-alikes

Balderson's tree-trunk mantisThis page
1
  1. Gray to gray-brown body, hard to spot on tree trunks
Black boxer bark mantisGo see →
123
  1. Black-and-white striped legs
  2. Jet-black, wingless body (female)
  3. Pinkish-red mark inside the front legs

Versus the black boxer bark mantis: the black boxer bark mantis, in the same family (Nanomantidae), also lives on tree bark in Australia.

Range

It lives on the trunks of thin, smooth-barked trees with few branches.

Behavior

When mating, the male twists his abdomen to match the direction of his genitalia and couples with the female.

Fun facts

  • In a 2015 study, the ratio of males with left- to right-twisted genitalia was 54:46 at Hervey Bay and 50:50 at Bundaberg, and the two forms had equal mating success.

There's little confirmed data on its size and body color. The colors in the drawing are a guess based on where it lives.

Sources

  1. Holwell et al. (2015) PLOS ONE
  2. Wikipedia — Ciulfina