Tag: roaches

tinysaurus-rex:

@zooophagous this is “Marshmallow.” At first I thought she was freshly molted but it’s been several weeks and she’s still white with dark brown markings (they’ve gotten darker but her white is still bold). Can dubia roaches be leucistic?

Any given animal can be leucistic, and she absolutely looks like she is. I can see some transparent areas of exoskeleton. 

VERY cool! I’d say set her aside in another container with a male and plenty of food, see if any babies have the same pattern. That’s a very pretty roach.

bogleech:

pulmonary-poultry:

Green roach?

Green roach!

They’re called banana roaches!

I saw them twice when I lived in Florida, and they escaped both times because unlike a lot of roaches they are very very prone to flying, they fly around as much as a moth or something does!

Banana roaches are occasionally kept as pets. They’re not technically native to the U.S, they came in on fruit, but they’re now well-established in Florida, Georgia, and similar areas. We have them now and then in Central Texas. They aren’t considered invasive, and they don’t infest houses, they’re an outdoor-only roach unless they get in and get confused. 

If you want to keep some, they’re very easy pets, and fun to watch. Mildly damp enclosure, a layer of leaf litter, a constant supply of cat food and a piece of fruit every few days at least, and you should have happy roaches. Nymphs are brown and flightless, adults are pretty green but very, very flighty. The main problem with them is their escaping due to flying when startled. Open the lid, startle 20 of ‘em, and suddenly they’re everywhere except in the tank. 

typhlonectes:

Termites are just cockroaches with a fancy social life

Reordering demotes one infamous insect group to being a mere branch of an equally infamous one

BY SUSAN MILIUS

Termites are the new cockroach… Literally. 

The Entomological Society of America is updating its master list of insect names to reflect decades of genetic and other evidence that termites belong in the cockroach order, called Blattodea.

As of February 15, “it’s official that termites no longer have their own order,” says Mike Merchant of Texas A&M University in College Station, chair of the organization’s common names committee. Now all termites on the list are being recategorized.

The demotion brings to mind Pluto getting kicked off the roster of planets, says termite biologist Paul Eggleton of the Natural History Museum in London. He does not, however, expect a galactic outpouring of heartbreak and protest over the termite downgrade. Among specialists, discussions of termites as a form of roaches go back at least to 1934, when researchers reported that several groups of microbes that digest wood in termite guts live in some wood-eating cockroaches too.

Once biologists figured out how to use DNA to work out genealogical relationships, evidence began to grow that termites had evolved as a branch on the many-limbed family tree of cockroaches…

Read more: Science News