Many-to-one mapping in Mantodea: camouflage strategy and phylogeny drive strike variation in prey capture with raptorial forelegs.

The evolution of camouflage has led to many examples of organisms mimicking their environment to remain undetected or unseen. Camouflage likely results in strong selective pressures to resemble the environment as it increases Darwinian fitness in both predators and prey, having the potential to result in ecomorphs, which are morphologies that convergently evolve to function in specific environments. Whether the evolution of camouflage in ambush predators results in ecomorphs can be determined by examining the linear morphology and function of the raptorial forelegs among Mantodea (i.e. praying mantises), as the acquisition of food may vary based upon the microhabitat mimicked. We hypothesize that the evolution of camouflage constrains a species' diet based upon available prey in the habitat mimicked, resulting in the evolution of ecomorphs for prey capture. We analyzed over 200 3D high-speed prey capture attempts among ten species, three families and four camouflage strategies. Using principal component analyses to reduce dimensionality of dependent traits and phylogenetic mixed models, our results suggest that the evolution of camouflage does not result in ecomorphs based on raptorial foreleg linear morphology. We also found that camouflage strategy had a significant effect on one kinematic axis, and relatively strong phylogenetic signal but minimal effect of morphology on strike kinematics. Lastly, we recognize two new quantitatively and qualitatively distinguishable hunting strategies in Mantodea. Our results suggest that phylogeny and camouflage shape the versatility of raptorial forelegs in prey capture, which may allow mantises to diversify in their camouflage strategies to exploit different ecological niches, regardless of phylogeny or morphology.