I saw an article on a mantis encased in Amber that’s 30 million years old. assuming mantis reproduce once a year, this thing is like 30 million generations removed from a modern mantis. It might not even be able to reproduce with a modern mantis Even if it does look exactly the same.
I looked into humans as a comparison and even 10 million years ago, the modern human didn’t even exist. there’s a good chance we’re too separated from them to reproduce or even be considered the same species. so wouldn’t that also apply to this 30 million year old mantis.
In: Biology
Adaptation and evolution is driven by a changing environment. We evolved relatively rapidly due to (so says the current theory) changing environments, diets and other factors.
Arthropods (bugs, crabs, etc.) have been able to survive myriad circumstances with their bodies being as they are, so they haven’t needed to adapt as much. Now, is that mantis in amber the same, genetically, as a modern, living mantis? Likely not, but we don’t know.
Consider sharks, tortoises, turtles, tuataras, and many insects that have gone relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. They found what works for them and haven’t really needed to change. Then on the opposite end of adaptation, you have the modern bird which was not much more than a gliding dinosaur 65 million years ago. At that same time, our ancestors were barely rodents.
A praying mantis isn’t just one species it’s a large group of species, kinda like primates with humans. So while that one species might no longer be alive it could be basically indistinguishable to most people. Most species are more stable than humans have been. We are an evolutionary oddball.
according to the wikipedia page, there are more than 2,400 species of modern “Mantis” insects. Its not 1 species. Likely the amber one is a different species than the current ones, but it is more like saying “We found a fish” than it is “We found a dog!” Mantis is a general classification, not a specific species. This is similar to most insects. There are 17,500 species of butterfly, 22,000 species of ant, 1,000 species of wasps, etc. Insects just love similar but different species.
Sharks are older than trees. Before TREES evolved there were pretty-much-the-same-as-a-modern-shark swimming around.
They would not be the SAME SPECIES but could be from the same genera or other higher level organization.
So the mantis in amber likely doesn’t have any living relatives it could breed with, but it would have various descendants and descendants of it’s contemporary cousins.
Humans evolved rapidly in the last million years or so. Many other organisms looked pretty much the exact same for the last several hundred million years
Think of the term “mantis” in the same way as you think of the term “bird”: it’s not one species but thousands, whose evolution dates back many tens of millions of years. With humans of course it’s different: most people use the word “human” to describe only members of the *Homo Sapiens* species. You could also expand the definition of “human” to include any animal within the genus *Homo*; that would include many more species, with an evolutionary history dating back about 3.5 million years.
First off the mantis you’re referring to was found to be faked. Not to say it can’t happen but the specific one that rotates through Facebook/Reddit/Twitter/etc. is absolutely fake. The posing is perfect and the amber is extremely clear. If it was real the mantis would be laid down and the amber is almost always cloudy and full of random trash like bark, dirt, and leaves.
That said.
If it was real and it happened to some how be the exact same species as one that exists it would theoretically be able to reproduce although the offspring would be missing genetic protections from disease developed over the last 30 million years so they would likely die to whatever is currently the mantis equivalent of the common cold.
The probability of it being able to reproduce is likely low. It would have to be from a region that hasn’t been effected by major world altering events like the ice ages, floods, famine, and/or drought. Those type of events cause a narrowing of the gene pool locally or will wipe out a subspecies completely.
The answer is yes, probably. There really isn’t a satisfactory common definition of what constitutes a “species”.
Used to be that the definition was based around reproductive compatibility and gene flow, but modern genomics showed that different “species” successfully mate all the time and produce viable offspring.
e.g. everything from a St Bernard down to a Chihuahua are the same “species” despite a 32-fold difference in average weight and lack of direct mating compatibility. Meanwhile wolves, coyotes and dogs are counted as three different species despite cross-breeding to the point that most modern coyotes are genetically a mix.
Most of the modern arbitrary distinctions are to benefit from environmental protections. Identifying 2400 individual “species” of Mantis eans more environmental protection than classifying them as a few dozen species with a broad range.
Saying “mantis” is like saying “primate”.
A 30 million year old primate is not going to be a human, but it will still be a primate.
The one that keeps getting traded around online is a fake btw. The bubbles near the body are a giveaway
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