Robert K. Rose, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Biological Sciences at Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Virginia visited Catawba on Friday, October 3rd, 2014. Professor Emeritus Robert Rose began teaching at the University of Norfolk in 1979 and is a biologist with a focus in on small mammals.

He talked to students about the two studies he did within a one hectare of an old cornfield in Virginia and how he found a large number of dead Loblolly pine trees, and discovered that the praying mantises similarly orientate how they lay their eggs in that area.

He discovered that small rodents like Meadow Voles and Cotton Rats were destroying the trees because of girdling. Girdling is the removal of bark on trees, which is how rodents’ get most of their dietary needs.

While trapping and monitoring the rodents in the field, Rose began to notice that the Chinese and Praying Mantises in the field all laid their eggs in a similar orientation. After study the Mantises for a while, he came up with the hypothesis that Mantises lay their eggs in a general Southern orientation. He then began to hypothesize as to why Mantises lay their eggs that way, thinking that because they lay eggs in autumn and that the direction of the sun and heat from the sun helps the mother lay their eggs by giving them more energy and that they eggs will then grow faster and create larger Mantises since they are in the sun. After researching, they discovered that the Mantises laid in the southern orientation were smaller and took longer to hatch. Therefore he concluded that the southern orientation was simply for the mother’s energy and warmth while laying the eggs. Rose then hypothesized again that the southern side of trees and plants are warmer while the northern sides are cooler and then did an experiment that led to his hypothesis being correct.

Unfortunately, Robert Rose and his team of students have submitted multiple times to four different scientific journals and none of them have accepted his theories.