California Mystery Cockroach

Roachsmith

Roachsmith

Sixth Instar
Can someone please ID these roaches for me? I found them in Santa Rosa, California. They're small, about .25" and appear to be adults. I originally thought they were nymphs because of their size and they resemble german roach nymphs. However, one of them is laying an ooth!

Hope someone knows what they are! :)

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You might have better luck with an ID over on the SCABIES forum. Someone's bound to have found these before. I know Andrew found some interesting desert roaches a few months back.

 
It's a recently introduced species (probably brought in with nursery plants) that's been around Marin County California for at least four years. Are you from there? Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has been able to identify it.

 
Interesting. I'm in Sonoma County which is pretty close to Marin. Do you have any suggestions of where I might send one (or a pic) for ID?

I will try the SCABIES forum too. Thanks.

 
So I looked this roach up on bugguide.net out of curiosity

And there's a few postings of it, along with a response from a guy from CDFA from '06 that they tried to have this roach ID'd, and couldn't.

"Yes, these are definitely cockroaches - and they are adults - but they are not any of the typical house pest type - i.e., not the German roach or American roach, etc. We (at CDFA) were alerted of this cockroach over the last year or so, but can find no one who knows the species. We have sent specimens to numerous people to try to get an identification, but so far turning up a blank. I will be curious if anyone knows what it is in this forum."

Link to Above: http://bugguide.net/node/view/87476/bgimage

That guys email is available if you click on his name, perhaps drop an email and see if he ever got an ID?

 
There are short winged species like Blattella lituricolis but it's too small and the cerci are wrong. Did you happen to find/see an adult male?

 
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I have never found any males, but there seems to be lots of females under bushes. I'm wondering if maybe males hang out in the bush instead of under it. I'll have to take a better look next week. I did get a reply from someone at the California Academy of Sciences:

"The cockroach that you are seeing was first noticed in Marin County a few years ago. Specimens were sent to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and they in turn sent the specimens to a specialist in Germany. So far, we have not heard back from them. There are no specimens of this species in the CAS collection. It appears to be from a species group found in SE Asia. By the way, only females are wingless – males have wings."

Norman D. Penny, Ph.D.

Sr. Collections Manager

Entomology Department

California Academy of Sci.

 
Someone at the British Museum has identified them as Phyllodromica (Luridiblatta) trivittata. I'm sending them some specimens for study B)

 
They're pretty hard to catch and I'm starting to find less of them. I'm working on getting more though so I'll let you know :D

The roaches that hatch out of those ooths must be TINY! The ooth is only as big as a grain of sand!

 
Roachsmith said:
They're pretty hard to catch and I'm starting to find less of them. I'm working on getting more though so I'll let you know :D The roaches that hatch out of those ooths must be TINY! The ooth is only as big as a grain of sand!
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Any chance you'd be willing to part with a few grains of sand? :P

 
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