Macleay's Spectre

• reproducciónIts eggs carry a nutrient-rich outer structure (a capitulum) that attracts ants, which carry them off to their underground nest, where they hatch safe from predators.
• The newly hatched nymphs are black and reddish and move in jerks, mimicking the ants of the nest they emerge from, until they get away and take on their cryptic colouring.
• It can reproduce by parthenogenesis, though in that case all the offspring are female.
• Its eggs fool ants. They bear a fleshy, lipid-rich appendage called a capitulum, which the ants identify as food and which leads them to carry the eggs into their underground nest. There the egg is protected from desiccation and from predators.
• And the nymph emerges disguised as an ant. On hatching inside the ant nest, it mimics ants of the genus Leptomyrmex: orange head, white collar and black body, and it also moves fast, jerking its body as they do, something extraordinary in a stick insect. That is how it leaves the nest without being attacked.
• That disguise is short-lived: it loses the ant colouring within three to five days, as it climbs from the ground to the tree canopy, and over the following moults it takes on the spiny, slow-moving look of the adult.
• The female fires her eggs: she flings them several metres away with a flick of the abdomen, scattering them across the forest floor.
• It can reproduce without males. If there are none, it resorts to parthenogenesis; those eggs take up to nine months to hatch, compared with four for fertilised ones, and produce only females.
• When threatened, the female curls her abdomen over her back, imitating the posture of a scorpion, although she is completely harmless.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Rainforest and sclerophyll forest of eastern Australia; it feeds mainly on eucalyptus and spends the day motionless among the foliage

Size at birth

The newly hatched nymph mimics a black, red-headed ant of the genus Leptomyrmex, in colour and in the way it moves, and loses that livery between the third and the fifth day after hatching

Sexual maturity

Parthenogenesis is by automixis with terminal fusion: the unmated female produces only daughters genetically identical to herself. If she mates with a winged male, the offspring are mixed

Gestation / incubation

Fertilised eggs hatch after four months; those laid by parthenogenesis take up to nine, with one extreme case recorded of more than 400 days. They have to be kept below 25 °C or they hardly hatch at all

Litter / clutch size

500 to 1,000 eggs per female over her lifetime; one study measured an average of 574 when feeding on eucalyptus and more than 900 on bramble, which is more nutritious. The female flicks them from the canopy to the ground with the abdomen

Sources consulted: Lista Roja de la UICN · Hughes y Westoby (1992), Functional Ecology · Zeng et al. (2020), sobre dispersión de ninfas · Museo Australiano · Smart, Andrew & O'Hanlon 2023, Australian Journal of Zoology (Hill et al.) · The Animal Facts · iNaturalist, ficha Extatosoma tiaratum · guias de cria · Fichas de especie de Extatosoma tiaratum

Best time: Nocturnal and tree-dwelling in the forests of eastern Australia, from rainforest to temperate woodland; by day it stays motionless imitating a dead leaf and sways as though moved by the wind

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.