Question about Allpet roaches website

Pics of P. lata

Pair. Females and nymphs often have striking red and black bands across there abdomen.

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male. All the males I've observed (including some specimens preserved in Auburn University) had black abdomens, which might be a useful character for identification.

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Diagnostic charater for this species : ridges supplied with heavy tuft of hairs.

This feature is shown on P. notha and caudelli as well as P. zebra (though location of the second pair of ridges is different in zebra), but this species can probably distinguished by the color of abdomen (apparently, P. notha and caudelli doesn't have black abdomen). There are other features to distinguish this species correctly but I don't want to get in detail.

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Oh and the reason why I doubt that the species you have listed as P. lata is not P. lata is that it has black head, which is a common color pattern in P. virginica.

and reason why I don't think your P. zebra is P. zebra is because from what I've gathered, P. zebra resembles more of P. divisa and probably isn't red as nymph.

 
Forgot to mention that P. lata in your website doesn't seem to have white margins, which is another character of P. virginica.

 
The specimens in those photos are correctly identified but they are very old, low quality images so your confusion is not unreasonable. That website is a dinosaur and I should probably stop paying for its hosting.

 
Orin McMonigle said:
The specimens in those photos are correctly identified but they are very old, low quality images so your confusion is not unreasonable. That website is a dinosaur and I should probably stop paying for its hosting.
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I'm pretty positive that P. lata in the pic is not P. lata but a P. virginica. It exhibits characters that are found in P. virginica but not in P. lata so its either misidentified or you accidentally placed the wrong picture in there (though I'm not sure about P. zebra since I've not seen them in person, but I doubt that they are red as nymphs).

 
Cariblatta said:
I'm pretty positive that P. lata in the pic is not P. lata but a P. virginica.
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You are basing your "idenification" on the color of the head but if you look closely at the image the head is not black, only the eyes are (it's gold inbetween) and the margin is there but the low quality of the photo is allowing you to imagine you see something different. The original specimens were identified by anatomical features, not color, color is not a good indicator and varies among populations.
 
Orin McMonigle said:
You are basing your "idenification" on the color of the head but if you look closely at the image the head is not black, only the eyes are (it's gold inbetween) and the margin is there but the low quality of the photo is allowing you to imagine you see something different. The original specimens were identified by anatomical features, not color, color is not a good indicator and varies among populations.
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Well...specimen in the picture is VERY misleading in appearance so I would either change the picture or remove it ASAP before you take the website down(to me, it looks like head is pretty solid black in color; black margin connecting gap between eyes. I even magnified the picture to look at it closely. In other picture where you have what appears to be P. lata shows golden coloration between the eyes).

Keep in mind that color, though not always a good way for identification, can be very useful in differentiating some species since some color patterns are not found in other species.

 
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I would not try to identify most Parcoblatta species from a photo even if there was a good shot of a male and female. Colors in photographs are often misleading, even when high quality, and even were color patterns perfectly consistent for a species. Overexposure can make other species seem to have stripes like zebra. Also, your lata photo above appear to have a very dark colored head.

The old website does not show up very well on the search engines any more unless you know its name and so it serves little function. I probably won't delete it, just make it a free version. If you have some photos you want to put up there of different Parcoblatta that would be okay, I like your picture of the setae on the tergites.

 
Orin McMonigle said:
The old website does not show up very well on the search engines any more unless you know its name and so it serves little function. I probably won't delete it, just make it a free version. If you have some photos you want to put up there of different Parcoblatta that would be okay, I like your picture of the setae on the tergites.
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I'll happily donate some pics of different species of Parcoblatta pics once my new males start to emerge (for better quality pics) :)

 
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