author(s)
Patel Hiral, Abhishek Shukla and Surani Pratik

abstract
The present study was conducted during August 2016 to July 2017 with the objective to explore the fauna of mantids from different agri-horticultural crops, ornamentals, weeds, wild vegetation and leaf litter at Navsari, South Gujarat, India. Overall 374 specimens of mantids were collected from different agro-ecosystems. From these specimens, 21 known species belonging to 15 genera and 5 families were identified. Out of all 21 species proportion of Mantis religiosa (Burmeister‎, 1838) was found the most abundant in the study area i.e. 67.91 followed by Hierodula viridis (Burmeister, 1838) (6.95) and Humbertiella ceylonica (Saussure, 1869) (5.34%), which were also recorded as very common species. Among different agro-ecosystems, grassland ecosystem ranked first position with 21 species (100%). The paddy ecosystem constituted 14 species (66.67%), followed by mango ecosystem which constituted 10 species (47.61%), while in banana and pond ecosystem 7 species (33.33%) were presented. The variation in species of mantids might be due to diverse kind of habitat, vegetation, food availability and agricultural practices. Maximum numbers of species were recorded during September and October months during the survey period. The value of Shannon index of diversity for mantids at Navsari Agricultural University campus was 1.49, evenness was 0.49 while species richness is 21.