A small spearing mantis whose colour matches the ground rather than the species.
A mantis shrimp to about 10 cm, slender by comparison with the gonodactylids, with two large stalked eyes set well apart and a smooth carapace lacking their heavy ridging. It is a spearing species: the raptorial appendage ends in a slender toothed dactyl used to impale soft prey, not in the swollen calcified heel of Gonodactylaceus falcatus. Colour is extremely variable, from grass green through olive and sandy brown to cream and almost white, often with a pale line down the middle of the back, and it tracks the ground the animal is living on rather than anything taxonomic, so colour is not an identification. Size settles the other confusion: Lysiosquillina maculata is four times as long, boldly banded, and lives in a deep open burrow with a raised rim.
It occupies ready-made cavities in rubble, empty shells, seagrass and short burrows in coarse sand, and hunts small fish, shrimps and worms from the entrance rather than ranging after them. It moves between shelters more readily than the burrow-dwelling spearers do, and it is reasonably often seen crossing open sand at night before dropping into cover.
It is one of the most widespread stomatopods, recorded through the tropical Indo-Pacific and beyond it, and it is found from the shallows to about 25 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
