Mantises jump from smooth surfaces by pushing with “heel” pads of their hind legs

This submission contains data underlying the article "Mantises jump from smooth surfaces by pushing with “heel” pads of their hind legs". The data include recorded adhesive pad contact areas of middle and hind legs of juvenile Stagmomantis theophila mantises while they accelerated for jumps from smooth glass surfaces, as well as adhesive pad contact areas of front, middle and hind leg steps during horizontal walking. Moreover, tables are provided summarising further data of the jumps including pad type and number, take-off direction, foot angle, and time of detachment. A further data table summarises the kinematics of S. theophila mantises jumping from high-density foam, including the timing of acceleration, take-off, and the detachment of middle and hind legs, as well as foot and body coordinates. The data underlie main figures 3-7 and figures S3-S4 in the supplementary material.

Methods
High-speed video recordings of jumps of juvenile Stagmomantis theophila mantises from glass or high-density foam surfaces. Several synchronised high-speed cameras were used (Phantom V7.1 at 4700 frames per second, or Photron Fastcam SA3 high-speed camera at 1000 fps). Adhesive contact areas were recorded using a Leica DM IRE2 inverted microscope with a 5x lens and epi-illumination. Contact areas were extracted from the videos using threshold algorithms in MATLAB.