Blaberus craniifer debate- New evidence?

[Zephyr]

So I was browsing the net and came across this picture of what appears to be a BROWN Blaberus craniifer.

Morphologically, it has the build of black wing craniifer, as well as the pronotum pattern. As for its colors- well, obviously they're different from those of black wing craniifer, particularly the elytral margins nearest the pronotum. But, as anyone keeping black wing craniifer has noticed, the adults will emerge with varying amounts of light brown in the middle of their wings, as well as different amounts of black on the area behind their pronotum. Selective breeding in captivity or natural selection in the wild could create varying amounts of this light brown, potentially producing specimens like the one pictured.

If an individual like this was used as the holotype of B. craniifer, and subsequent specimens with color similarities (or ubiquitous characteristics such as "wing hairs") were identified using said holotype, then we could have a lot of B. craniifer not actually being B. craniifer (such as the "B. craniifer 'European'"). Thoughts, comments, concerns? (The picture was taken from Golden Phoenix Exotica's website before it mysteriously disappeared.)

 

[KitKatie329]

It's amazing to me how little it takes to COMPLETELY separate two creatures which, to the untrained eye, look exactly the same!

 

[makoygaara]

Question.

Is this the result of crossbreeding?

What is the color of the ORIGINAL B. Cranifer? Black or Brown?

I think somebody messed up in the past and crossbred this species with the other ones and spread them in the market?

It only confuses new hobbyists.

 

[vfox]

My old fusca craniifer hybrids looked just like this one. The build of the craniifer with the color of the fusca with some having the full face pronotum markings.

 

[Zephyr]

Question.

Is this the result of crossbreeding?

What is the color of the ORIGINAL B. Cranifer? Black or Brown?

I think somebody messed up in the past and crossbred this species with the other ones and spread them in the market?

It only confuses new hobbyists.

The individual I originally posted very well could be the result of crossbreeding. The color of the original holotype for B. craniifer SUPPOSEDLY is brown. However, B. craniifer and B. trapezoideus were synonymized and I suppose there's a chance that the holotypes were too.

According to Orin, Roachman Willis (a breeder who used to breed quite a few roaches "back in the day") mixed black wing craniifer with something else that wasn't craniifer and created the hybrids unintentionally. These were further spread as B. craniifer and created a hybrid that is actually quite difficult to find for sale nowadays. This hybrid exhibits darkened elytra but is much smaller than the supposed "fusca x craniifer" hybrids that are everywhere right now. Here's a picture of what I believe to be from this original R. Willis hybrid strain:

The adults often emerge with deformed wings even under ideal conditions.

The common hybrid strain right now is the "fusca x craniifer", which, although they can exhibit the dark colors of B. craniifer, are far too large and variably colored to be the result of these two species crossing. Most likely, they are the result of crossing pure B. fusca with B. "peruvianus"; the two have similar looking females and to the casual keeper can easily be confused. This hybrid is large, robust, colorful, hardy, and an excellent breeder, making it a much better feeder than the R. Willis hybrid, B. fusca, and B. peruvianus.

My old fusca craniifer hybrids looked just like this one. The build of the craniifer with the color of the fusca with some having the full face pronotum markings.

This individual very well could be a hybrid. The things that suggest to me that it isn't is the overall build, the "cleanness" of the wing venation, and the pronotum margins. However, even black wing craniifer can be very variable in body shape etc.

Here's a picture of some of my old craniifer showing the wing speck:

Link to picture

And here's an undeniably pure wild caught individual with abnormal tegminal and pronotal margins (photo from Google):