Amazons Are Back: Absence of Males in a Praying Mantis from Uruguayan Savannas.

With a broad distribution throughout South America, Brunneria subaptera (Saussure) (Coptopterygidae) is the most abundant praying mantis species in Uruguay, mostly associated with grassland vegetation. Their body coloration can vary between green or brown sepia. The recent catalog of Uruguayan mantids showed that all specimens of B. subaptera from the collections in Uruguay were females, suggesting an absence of males in natural populations. The aim of this study was to determine the occurrence of female-only populations of B. subaptera in Uruguay. Moreover, we analyzed the genetic variation and estimated the time of the most recent common ancestor of the species. We performed bimonthly samplings in two localities in Uruguay for 1 year and we sexed the individuals. We extracted DNA from the abdominal tissue of adult females and sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial cox1 gene to assess the genetic diversity and to estimate diversification times. We did not find any males in either of the studied localities. The age estimates revealed a recent origin of the species (2.33 Ma), and there was no genetic differentiation between the individuals from Uruguayan localities. This absence of males of B. subaptera documented in the sampled locations suggests that the species reproduces by thelytokous parthenogenesis. This study opens promising venues for future research into reproductive strategies and polymorphism in South-American praying mantises that inhabit one of the largest areas of grasslands in the world, currently under dramatic deterioration and reduction.

Mantodea (Insecta) of Uruguay: diversity and distribution.

Praying mantises (Order Mantodea) are charismatic insects thanks to their diverse and peculiar appearance and surprising behaviors. However, studies on this order are scarce, particularly in the Southern Neotropical Region. Here we present the first catalogue of praying mantises from Uruguay. We revised Mantodea specimens deposited at Colección de Entomología, Facultad de Ciencias (FCE-MN), Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay. We recorded information about distribution and notes on the biology of the species. Nineteen species are reported for Uruguay, including new family, genera or species for the country. We report the presence of six taxa for first time: the family Mantoididae, genus Pseudovates, Musoniella and Metaphotina, the species Mantoida beieri, Eumusonia livida, Musoniella argentina, Metaphotina brevipennis, Parastagmatoptera theresopolitana and Pseudovates iheringi. We could confirm four species previously reported for the country, but eight species are based on dubious records or species and we cannot confirm their current occurrence in this work. More studies are needed in the country for further investigations of Mantodea in the country and the region.

Silk wrapping of nuptial gifts as visual signal for female attraction in a crepuscular spider.

An extensive diversity of nuptial gifts is known in invertebrates, but prey wrapped in silk is a unique type of gift present in few insects and spiders. Females from spider species prefer males offering a gift accepting more and longer matings than when males offered no gift. Silk wrapping of the gift is not essential to obtain a mating, but appears to increase the chance of a mating evidencing a particularly intriguing function of this trait. Consequently, as other secondary sexual traits, silk wrapping may be an important trait under sexual selection, if it is used by females as a signal providing information on male quality. We aimed to understand whether the white color of wrapped gifts is used as visual signal during courtship in the spider Paratrechalea ornata. We studied if a patch of white paint on the males' chelicerae is attractive to females by exposing females to males: with their chelicerae painted white; without paint; and with the sternum painted white (paint control). Females contacted males with white chelicerae more often and those males obtained higher mating success than other males. Thereafter, we explored whether silk wrapping is a condition-dependent trait and drives female visual attraction. We exposed good and poor condition males, carrying a prey, to the female silk. Males in poor condition added less silk to the prey than males in good condition, indicating that gift wrapping is an indicator of male quality and may be used by females to acquire information of the potential mate.