Flower mantis

The flower mantises are diurnal group with a single ancestry (a clade), but the majority of the known species belong to family Hymenopodidea.

[3] These insects display different body morphologies depending on their life stage; juveniles are able to bend their abdomens upwards, allowing them to easily resemble a flower.

[2] In his 1940 book Adaptive Coloration in Animals, Hugh Cott quotes an account by Nelson Annandale, saying that the mantis hunts on the flowers of the "Straits Rhododendron", Melastoma polyanthum.

The insect is pink and white, with flattened limbs with "that semiopalescent, semicrystalline appearance that is caused in flower petals by a purely structural arrangement of liquid globules or empty cells".

Seven of the genera are in the Hymenopodidae: Acromantis Hymenopus Helvia Theopropus Creobroter Chloroharpax Pseudocreobotra Blepharopsis Gongylus Idolomantis Harpagomantis Pseudoharpax

The flower mantises include the orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus , which mimics a rainforest orchid of southeast Asia to lure its prey , pollinator insects. [ 1 ]