How many eggs does a praying mantis lay?
Mantis
The reason for sexual cannibalism has been debated; experiments show that females on low quality diets have a higher chance to engage in sexual cannibalism compared to females on high quality diets.[64] Some consider that submissive males gain a selective advantage by producing offspring. This theory is supported by a quantifiable increase in the duration of copulation among males which are cannibalized, in some cases doubling both the duration and the chance of fertilization. This is contrasted by a study where males were seen to approach hungry females with more caution, and were shown to remain mounted on hungry females for a longer time, indicating that males that actively avoid cannibalism may mate with multiple females. The same study also found that hungry females generally attracted fewer males than those that were well fed.[65] The act of dismounting after copulation is dangerous for males, for at this time, females most frequently cannibalize their mates. An increase in mounting duration appears to indicate that males wait for an opportune time to dismount a hungry female, who would be likely to cannibalize her mate.[63]