Carnivorous Encounters
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You walk through the savannah looking for the trumpets of pitcher plants that are poking through the grasses. You peer into each pitcher’s trumpet with the expectation of finding a pitcher plant caterpillar or moth (Exyra sp.) that lives in the trumpet of the pitcher plant.
More often, you only see caracasses of other insects that have fallen to the base of the trumpet. During love bug season, the trumpets can be filled to the brim! After a doomed insect slides down the slippery side of the trumpet, it cannot escape and dies. Its carcass is “digested” by the carnivorous plant.
This praying mantis was our reward for investigating the savannah. Perched atop the trumpet of a Yellow Pitcherplant (Sarracenia flava), she was waiting patiently for her next meal. The pitcher plant provided her a high vantage point to use her very keen eyesight to spot approaching prey. The praying mantis may spend hours perched motionless waiting for a chance to grab an unsuspecting insect between her powerful front legs.
The praying mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) is quite common from Virginia to Florida in the autumn. Look for this insect in the upper clusters of flowers, especially those in the aster family. The flowers attract butterflies and other insects that feed on the flowers’ nectar.
The Praying Mantis and the Gulf Fritillary
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We were walking along a trail with our friends and had stopped to admire a nice batch of pickerelweed that was growing in the water near a small wooden bridge on a trail. We were enjoying and photographing the many butterflies that were nectaring on the pickerelweed. Then I looked down into the water and say many butterfly wings floating on its surface. I knew then that a praying mantis had to be nearby.
In fact, she was directly above the floating wings on a pickerelweed, lying in wait for her next butterfly meal. This praying mantis had lost part of one of her forelimbs, but the abundance of buterfly wings showed that it did not seem to greatly impair her hunting skills.
Several Gulf Fritillaries and sulphur butterflies landed on her pickerelweed, but either sensed danger and left or were just lucky and escaped with their lives. But finally the praying mantis’ arms reached out and snagged an unwary Gulf Fritillary. We watched for over half an hour as she consumed every butterfly morsel except for the scaly wings which fell off as she finished her meal.
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