The first Toxodera

Audinet-Serville described Toxodera denticulata in 1837, in the same work in which he created the genus Toxodera. His only specimen was a male said to come from Java, given to the Paris museum by a merchant and entomologist from Le Havre; it is still there, with the abdomen missing beyond the fifth segment. The female was described in 1889 by Wood-Mason, also from Java, and Toxodera gigas Ouwens, 1913, based on a Javan juvenile since destroyed, is the same species.

According to Roy (2009), males measure 119-134 mm, with a 38-47 mm pronotum and 53-57 mm tegmina; females reach 135-150 mm. The male in these plates measures about 139 mm on the scale photo, slightly above Roy's range; its long, spine-like eye points are those of T. denticulata, not of the larger T. maxima.

How to recognise it: eyes drawn out into long, strong spines; a frontal shield ending above in two small lobes; wide femoral lobes on the mid and hind legs, pinched in the middle, brown with a pale line along the margin; and a narrow, dark lobe on tergite 5, strongly curved forward.

For more than a century several giant Toxodera were filed under this name. Roy (2009) separated T. maxima, even larger and with short, blunt eye points, and T. beieri, with a pale lobe on tergite 5 curved backwards.

Range: Myanmar, China (Yunnan), Thailand, West Malaysia, Nias and Java (Roy 2009). The male in these plates comes from my collection and was taken on Mount Halimun, West Java, the island of the type.

Do you have denticulata from other localities, or a female? Write to me at hola@mantodealab.com or on Instagram.

Plates

References

Photos and specimen: coll. E. Candela. Roy, R. (2009). Révision des Toxoderini sensu novo (Mantodea, Toxoderinae). Revue suisse de Zoologie 116(1): 93-183.