Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / May 2004

Congratulations! You have just learned the first and probably most
important truth about scientific work: just about any good idea you
come up with is either too hard or does not work.  Welcome to the
club.  What you have learned is what all scientists relearn day after
day, year after year.

The solution is to reduce the grandeur and scope of your ideas to
something that really is practical.  Is there any one small aspect of
what you have already tried that seems to have been more promising?
Attacking a big impossible project by taking little bites from
different angles, each offering only a tiny piece of the picture, can
sometimes work.  If you have enough little pieces all showing a
different aspect of the problem, you may have enough to work on the
larger picture.  In a project such as your, doing just one of the
pieces should be enough.

I am not an ecologist or a field entomologist and so can't offer you
any really good ideas.  But what about comparing the type of prey
ordinarily taken by mantises to the insect population readily
available in your area?  That is, mantids eat other insects but they
must be of a particular size and they must have certain specific
behavior patterns to come within the reach of a stationary stalking
predator.  Do a census of the variety of insects available in your
area and see what fraction of them (in number of species, in number of
individuals, and in total biomass) are suitable prey.  That might be a
lot easier than staring at one individual mantis waiting for something
interesting to happen.

But you already have some ideas for getting started. Why not post some
of them, and what you found about them, and let's see where they lead.

(I generally agree with R Norman's discussion. My approach here is to
try to refine what you started. Science often does that. First
generation ideas are not so good, but discussion of them can lead to
better ones.)

bob