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I am relieved. Madam is still there.
This afternoon, I checked the plant very thoroughly, but all I saw was the disgusting locust.
No trace of Madam. But when I checked the plant after the kids were in bed, as I do regularly every evening, if I am not on a business trip, she was there. As if she had waited for me - when I shined the light on her, she even rocked back and forth. As I said - as if she had waited for me.
That made my day.

As for her general condition - she is the same size as two weeks ago, and everything else seems to be the same as well. That leads me to the conclusion that she is all grown up now. Based on her expected lifespan, that fits into the pattern. I expect her to mate soon, probably in middle to late September. She will probably not survive into November, when the weather usually gets cold for the first time in winter here. But until then, we still have a couple of months - which could be interesting, if I would be able to take pictures of the mating. We'll see ...

Carolina

Finally, I am back from my two week long business trip to Florida. And although I really kept my eyes open and looked virtually in every green spot there, I did not see one praying mantis.
And what's worse is that when I looked for Madam today, there was no trace of her. Moreover, the plant looks really, really sick and basically the whole middle part is dead now. And that is where Madam was making her home before. The left and right outriggers of the plant are still somewhat healthy, and it looks like if they would actually grow again. I spotted a couple of blooms, the branches have grown longer and the leaves, although not looking really healthy, seem to be resilient enough to survive the combined attacks of the various spider mites, fungi, and locust.
Well, at least the family of Carolina wrens that nest at the base of the plant are thriving. The eggs have hatched this week and now Mom and Dad are extremely busy to feed four additional mouths.
What is really amazing, is that our kids play there every day. We set up two small water pools directly in front of the plant, but the birds do not seem to mind the loud noises, splashing water and wild gestures around them.
And since Madam is a Carolina Mantis, and the birds are Carolina Wrens, we now kind of feel having an outpost of this fine southern state in our backyard ...

Relocated

There she is again! My gut feeling of her relocating to a better part of the plant was correct - tonight, I found her on the part of the plant that crawls up the wall of our house.
She was quite active, reacting to the light that came from my video lamp, climbing from leaf to leaf (see photo), and she also seemed unharmed and unfazed by the whole hoopla around the spider mite attack, the chemical counterattack, the storm this week and all that.
I am just happy that she is still there. But for the next two weeks, I will not see her at all, because I will be on a very long business trip to Florida. Maybe I run into one or two of her relatives there ...

Nervous

We haven't seen Madam for the last five days - that makes me a bit nervous.
Has she decided to leave the plant - which is in a really bad shape after the attack of the spider mites.
Her usual hideout, in the middle of the plant, is not a very nice habitat anymore. Lots and lots of brown, dead leafs, the once over-boarding vegetation caved in to a sorry lump of mostly brownish, dying biomass. But one hope remains - that Madam has relocated to the outlying parts of the plants, especially that part which is crawling up on the wall of our house. There, the vegetation has already recovered quite nicely and although not as luscious and thick as it was in the middle of the plant, a Mantis should find some good spots there to rest and hide and hunt.
We even decided to try generating an extension to her habitat, and planted some new plants that we plan to put beside the original plant. At the growth rate we have here in the south, those should be ready for colonization in by the end of the month.
We'll see ...

 

Saturday

Just a normal, boring Saturday night in the plant - Madam hangs out in the underbrush, while the ugly locust slowly crawls and nawls all night long.

Answers

I got some scientific help yesterday, from one of the authors of the book "The Praying Mantids".
Professor Larry Hurd is the Herwick Professor of Biology at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
Although the book is just overflowing with knowledge and information, it is mainly geared towards fellow scientists a,d biologists, and so some facts that might be interesting for the amateur Mantid enthusiast are not in there.
So I sent him an email with a few questions that puzzled me, and he answered them - I very much appreciate that he took the time to deal with this request by a stranger, asking those things that must seem fairly mundane and simple to him. He really helped us to come clean with some things - here is an excerpt from his mail:

I think the species of mantid you have in your yard is Stagmomantis carolina.  The picture on your interesting blog shows that the wings do not cover the entire abdomen, and there seem to be a pair of pigmented spots about halfway down them.  The specimen is indeed a female: males are much more slender and have long wings.  Although females cannot fly, males are very adept at it and can be difficult to catch.  Individuals can indeed change color between instars, mainly depending on the amount of ultraviolet light they are exposed to.  They do not seem to know what color they are, so many people spot them when they move from a matching  background to its opposite.  Birds can find them at that time, as well.

It would be surprising if Tenodera sinensis were to be found in Alabama, since I have never found them that far south, but S. carolina should be fairly common in your area.  They hatch much later in the spring than either species of Tenodera, and the hatching can extend over several weeks.  It is also possible that there are several generations present at the same time, since your southern winters might not kill the adults, so the population could become asynchronous.  I have seen that in Florida, where all stages of the same species are often found at the same time.

There are about 20-25 species of mantids in the U.S., and there may be several species in Alabama, so I cannot comment on the other individuals you saw in your garden.  

So, to have actually three Mantids in different stages of development on the same plant is not an accident, but can be explained with the extended hatching over several weeks. I do not believe that we have several generations here, because the last winter was the coldest, most brutal one in recent history, and did not at all adhere to the normal scheme of "wearing your Hawaii shirt on Christmas while sipping on a cool drink in the warm breeze on your porch" we usually experience. Here in Northern Alabama, we occasionally have low temperatures in winter, but not for several weeks, and not as cold as it was in January/February this year. These conditions have killed every Mantis for sure.
The eggs, on the other hand, can survive temperatures of minus 40 degrees or so, and it was not as cold as that.

Then there is the thing with the ultraviolet light - I had no idea that this had an influence on the Mantids teint.
Well, madam also started out as a brownish-gray nymph, and over time developed the pale green shade she wears now. When we first detected her, the plant was still small and leaf coverage was patchy. So Madam got a lot of sun, partly also because she spent the first few weeks of her life mainly on the upper side of the leafs, whereas now we mostly find her on the underside.
Mini-Me, on the other hand, started out with about the same color as Madam, but because by then the plant had grown in to this big jungle-like creature, he did not get as much sun as Madam, and thus stayed in that brownish-gray color.

And now, we know for sure that Madam's family name is Carolina - she indeed has those two dark spots on her wings that identify her as Stagmomantis carolina. Also, our assumption that she is a female seems to be correct, because compared to Mini-Me, she is much broader in the hip region, so to speak.

Well, again, many thanks to Professor Hurd for this - and if you ever have a question about rocket science, I would be honored to return the favor. :)

Strike

Last night, the ugly locust was there again, feeding on the plant right at the spot that Madam customarily occupies. But this time, Madam was there, too. Over the span of about half an hour, she watched the locust, sitting there right next to him.

The picture clearly conveys the difference in size between the locust and Madam. My estimation is, that the locust has about five to six times the body mass, although the length is approximately the same.
And Madam slowly opened her predatory fore legs, rocked back and forth a few times, and then the strike happened. For a split second, she had the locust in her grasp, but then gravity took its toll and she could not hold on anymore. I watched her on a daily basis (if she decided to show herself) for almost three months now, so I know her behavior a little bit. And so I knew, that she would strike eventually, and had the camera rolling all the time. Out of the fifteen minutes or so of footage, I extracted the five seconds that show the strike.

According to the book "The Praying Mantids" by Prete, Hurd, Wells, and Wells, Mantids do not recognize the shape or the body mass of their prey, but only if it is an elongated form that fits into the correct size bracket.
A nymph would only strike at a very small target, whereas a fully grown (female) Mantis, which occasionally eats their (male) conspecifics, would probably consider a locust of about the same length as herself as genuine prey. Never mind that the locust is actually completely out of her league, because of the great disparity in body mass. It fits the other criteria, so let's give it a try!
I would have loved to see Madam actually being successful here, because first of all, the locust eats our (her) plant, secondly it is really ugly and stupid looking, and thirdly that would have been an amazing spectacle. I seriously doubt that she would have had the stomach to finish all of the locust - but what a feast nevertheless!

That Madam considered the locust as prey cements my assumption that she has eaten Mini-Me. He was in the same length bracket as the locust and clearly in her league relative to the body mass. Also, I am convinced now that she also ate the nymph Number Three, which would have been a mere snack to her.
It seems as if we had a fearless, dangerous, and deadly predator in our plant. Long gone are the days of Madam being considered as a sweet and delicate, pet-like creature. I am just grateful that we humans are clearly out of her league ...

Headlong

Well, with all those spider mites and lost forelegs, it was a relief to see that Madam is still there and apparently doing great.
She was at her usual spot tonight, looking into our living room. Maybe she enjoys watching us as much as we are enjoying watching her. Her wings seem to be longer now than before. Perhaps she is a boy after all. We'll see.

Loss

We lost one. On her crusade against the spider mites, my wife detected the predatory foreleg of a Mantis hanging at the underside of a leaf.
There is no doubt about what it is - and the color let's me dread that it is Mini-Me that lost it's limb. I have no idea, whether a Mantis could survive without that, or if it would grow back. It is rather more probable that these are just the remains, and that he got eaten by a larger predator. And the only largher predator in that habitat is ... Madam.
Mantids are known to be cannibalistic at times, and a larger female will eat a smaller male if the chance presents itself. But right now, we only have a few hard facts, and anything else is speculation. I will be on the lookout the next days.

Pest

Our vetch plant is under attack - gazillions of tiny red spider mites (Tetranychus urticae) have suddenly appeared yesterday. Quote from Wikipedia: 
It lays its eggs on the leaves, and it poses a threat to host plants by sucking cell contents from the leaves cell by cell, leaving very tiny, pale spots or scars where the green epidermal cells have been destroyed. Although the individual lesions are very small, commensurate with the small size of the mites, the frequently-observed attack of hundreds or thousands of spider mites can cause thousands of lesions and thus can significantly reduce the photosynthetic capability of plants, greatly reducing their production of nutrients, sometimes even killing the plants.
Usually, one would drive to the nearest Lowe's, buy some really nasty chemical stuff, spray the plant and be done with it. Unfortunately, if we would apply this to our plant, it would most certainly also kill our Mantids.
So my wife bought some chemicals that are applied through the water consumption of the plant, from the inside rather than the outside. This method takes longer and is less effective, so we hope that we did it in time, because those tiny bastards have already damaged the vetch a good deal.

Dinner

Mini-Me caught a moth and devoured it right in front of our window. He went through the body in just a couple of minutes, and left the (paper-like) wings untouched. After that, he just hung there and seemed very complacent.

In the meantime, Madam was sitting at her customary spot at the south side of the plant, waiting for prey herself. No sign of Number Three, the little one was probably hiding, because at night it is more vulnerable to attack than its already bigger conspecifics.