General Information

COMMON NAMES: Purplewinged Mantis, Purplewinged Praying-Mantis, Australian Mantis GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION: NATIVE Australia; EXOTIC EXOTIC ?, Cooks, Hawai‘i COOK ISLANDS STATUS: Introduced - Recent, Occasional, Not naturalised; Land, horticultural SIGNIFICANCE LIST: Biocontrol KEY FEATURES: Slender mantid to 8cmBL. BODY pale brown. WINGS centrally purple to dark brown, outers green.

Cook Islands Distribution

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Southern Group: Present    Makatea:
RR	MG	AT	MK	MT	AK	PL	TK	MN
+O

Northern Group:
TN	MH	RK	PK	NS	SW

Tenodera australasiae (Leach, 1814)
TAXONOMY: ANIMALIA; ARTHROPODA; ATELOCERATA; HEXAPODA; INSECTA; PTERYGOTA; Isoptera; MANTIDAE

IDENTIFICATION: To 8cmBL. HEAD triangular, eyes green. BODY long and narrow, light brown. WINGS patterned purple to dark brown with green margins.

GENERAL NOTE: New Zealand has two mantids: (1) Orthodera novaezealandiae (Colenso), the native species very closely related to the Australian Orthodera ministralis (Fabricius); and (2) the Springbok Mantis (Miomantis caffra), a South African species first recorded in Auckland in 1978 where it was well established and spreading. Formerly the NZ Mantis was thought to be the same as the Australian ministralis and a post-European introduction, however it is now generally accepted as native and as having been present before Europeans arrived. [after G.W.Ramsay 1990] Hawai‘i has six mantids: Brunneria borealis, Hierodula patellifera, Orthodera burmeisteri, Orthodera ministralis, Tenodera angustipennis, and Tenodera australasiae.

Vouchers:
Rarotonga head and legs of mantid collected 5/1998 by G.McCormack, in 1999 given BESO#625 but not identified on BESO spreadsheet; Chris Down of BESO sent photo #1001b with ID as Tenodera australasiae, and G.McCormack concluded 3/2005 that the specimen wings are consistent with this species on CSIRO website.

References:
None recorded.

Data Update History (information):
zTX, zB05a, zM05a, zD05a

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