mantis color change

[goldberg]

my mantis came out last night and he was a different color. he went from a dark green to a dark purple brownish. i heard of changing color, but i never thought my green one would change to purple.

[twocoloreyes]

thats nothin, this week my mantis came out from a five day hiatus and it turns out that he was busy changing color, he started out completley brown with a white stripe down the middle, now hes almost bright yellow with no stripe. i think one more molt till hes in his full yellow glory.

[goldberg]

does anyone know what determines his color? is it the lighting? or the color of the rocks that he's trying to blend in to?

[Gonodactylus]

Yes, we have a pretty good understanding of what leads to color change in N. wennerae and P. ciliata. I've posted about this at this site several times over the past couple of years. Try searching on color change.

Roy