A Tiny Predator If you meander over to the Bohart Museum of
Entomology, UC Davis campus, you'll see a very tiny predator
that looks for all the world like a green leaf. It's the Gambian
spotted-eye flower mantis and it's one of the many live
specimens housed there. It's green with pointed eyes (it appears
to have a pointy little head, too) and it grows to one-inch in
length. Its scientific name is Pseudoharpax virescens (order
Mantodea) and it's found in Gambia, the smallest country (in
square miles) on the African continent. And at the Bohart Museum
of Entomology. Bohart public outreach coordinator Brian Turner
says that flower mantises spend their time hiding in flowers,
waiting to ambush prey. It dines on insects. If threatened, the
Gambian spotted-eye flower mantis will lift its wings to expose
its orange and purple coloring. This, Turner says, "will likely
startle potential predators and cause them to lose track of the
mantis when it lowers its wings again." The Bohart Museum of
Entomology, founded in 19