@Hisserdude pretty much covered some of the main methods for collection.
I hate to disappoint here, but even though in recent years I became interested in cockroaches diversity, I never go on trips expecting to collect them. In other words, I do not set traps specifically for them. The idea is more to look at the big picture and examine the entire arthropod diversity in a certain location. Yeah, I do see some interesting roaches while doing so, some of them come to light trap (not only males,
@Hisserdude) others hidden under bark/stones, and some just roaming about on the vegetation. Unless you are looking for a certain species only, there is no reason to limit the search to one type of habitat.
Yeah, when I was referring to the light traps, I was talking about how some genera, like Parcoblatta or Arenivaga for example, only had winged males, that often fly to lights, the females however, are wingless or have vestigial wings, and thus are almost never found at light traps.
Other genera, like Panchlora, Epilampra or the numerous Ectobiids in FL have winged adults of both species, so you can definitely find adults of either gender at lights
@Tleilaxu, if it's one of those species.
1. Why can't you delete posts? I had serious trouble with formatting for some reason.
2. So I'm basically boned on easy methods to try and get roaches. I can't hunt at all hours of the night trying to find a specific roach you know
The peanut butter trick has been noted, going bait some areas.
Now unless I'm doing the wrong thing, Ozzie roaches should behave similarly to their American counterparts and inhabit the same areas... To be safe I put some PB on a trunk as well as the convenient shelters I normally find roaches under.
I know, I hate the way this new site deals with quotes, on the PC you can remove them easily, but they are impossible to remove on a tablet/phone it seems.
Yes, yes you are! :lol: You can hunt for them during the day, in fact it'll probably be easier, since the roaches won't be hiding under stuff at night, they'll be wandering around, making it harder to catch them. At least during the day you can catch them while they are resting.
Of course, certain species may be easier to catch at lights, especially genera like Panchlora that spend much of their time up in the trees during the day.
Now that I think of it, you can lay oat trails on the ground and check them at night, they usually attract roaches, however they also attract a wide variety of other invertebrates, ants, orthopterans, beetles, etc, and certain vertebrates too...
When I was in FL, I found that P.australiasia were a lot rarer than P.americana, and that they liked hanging out around wood.
