Shelfordella lateralis

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Shelfordella lateralis
Shelfordella lateralis. Female, with ootheca

Shelfordella lateralis . Female, with ootheca

Systematics
Subclass : Flying insects (Pterygota)
Order : Cockroaches (Blattodea)
Family : Blattidae
Subfamily : Blattinae
Genre : Shelfordella
Type : Shelfordella lateralis
Scientific name
Shelfordella lateralis
( Walker , 1868)

Shelfordella lateralis is a cockroach species native to North Africa and West Asia. It was introduced to North America and is naturalized there. The species is widely bred as a food animal by terrarium enthusiasts. German names are Tartar cockroach, Persian cockroach or "Schokoschabe".

description

Shelfordella lateralis is a medium-sized cockroach species, males reach 19 to 23 millimeters, females 22 to 25 millimeters of body length. It is characterized by a distinctive gender dimorphism . Males are light yellow-brown to straw-colored, the outer edge of the wing-coverts, near the base, is transparent. The animals are fully winged, the length of the cover wings protrudes beyond the tip of the abdomen when at rest. Females are dark brownish, with lighter markings on the wings and abdomen. The strongly shortened wings are triangular. Each wing has a light yellowish vertical stripe on the outside. The subgenital plate of the females is clearly edged at an acute angle with two blades.

The nymphs are two-colored: the front body is light chocolate brown, the abdomen is dark brown. The light stripes are already clearly recognizable on the wing sheaths of older nymphs. The oothecae reach about 10 millimeters in length, they are dark brown in color. They have a row of 14 to 23 teeth on the seam. They are asymmetrical, rounded on one side, trimmed on the other and thus more angular there.

From the widespread, synanthropic common cockroach Blatta orientalis , the species in the male sex can be distinguished at first glance by the color and the much longer wings. The more similar females can be distinguished by the bright longitudinal stripes that Shelfordella lateralis has on the outer edge of the wings, these are absent in Blatta orientalis . In addition, the shortened wings of Shelfordella lateralis are less far apart than they are broad, and more in Blatta orientalis . In the male, the shape of the pronotum differs from the Shelfordella arabica , which is sympatricly distributed in the wild : it is significantly less wide than it is long. In the female, the yellow wing stripe is missing in Shelfordella arabica , and the shape of the shortened wing is different.

Today the species can also be determined using DNA barcoding .

development

Each female of the species is able to produce 25 ooths, each of which contains 10 to 20 eggs. The young nymphs hatch after about 40 days. The species has five nymph stages and thus develops faster than the common cockroach, which goes through seven to ten stages. At around 27 ° C, the development time in the laboratory was around 224 days, and at similar temperatures around 60 to 90 days faster than the common cockroach. Adults of the species survived in the laboratory for more than 390 days. The female can produce the first ootheca about four to seven days after the imaginal molt.

distribution

The species is naturally widespread in desert-like habitats, often in mountains. It occurs in North Africa, from Libya to the east, south to Sudan, in Arabia, Asia Minor and the Caucasus, from then east to Central Asia (Kashmir, Iran, Afghanistan).

After the Second World War, the species was introduced to North America by military transport from the Middle East. The first evidence was an army depot in Lathrop (California) in 1978. It occurs here synanthropically in buildings such as greenhouses and warehouses, on garbage and compost heaps as well as in the field in California, Texas and Arizona. There is evidence that it displaces the Blatta orientalis , which was introduced earlier . In Europe, the species occurs very rarely as a refugee from forage breeding in buildings, but does not seem to multiply or persist here. Their settlement in the open air was assessed as unlikely for Switzerland. Horst Bohn does not count them among the synanthropic species common in Germany. According to a notice, the species appeared in the open ground in 2007 in the port area of Cagliari , Sardinia. It is not known whether there was permanent settlement there.

Relationship with people

The species is often bred and traded as a food animal, usually under the name "Schokoschabe"; it serves as food for insectivorous vertebrates kept in terrariums, especially reptile species. Shelfordella lateralis is popular as a breeding animal because the animals are easy to hold and - unlike other cockroaches - are unable to walk up vertical panes of glass.

Phylogeny and Taxonomy

The species was first described by Francis Walker in 1868 as the Periplaneta lateralis . There is no agreement about their assignment to a genus, it is listed by most authors either in the genus Shelfordella , or Shelfordella is understood as a subgenus of the genus Blatta ; in this case the species is called Blatta lateralis . According to DNA analysis, all three genera are closely related, without the data allowing precise phylogeny. Here the classification in the online catalog Cockroach Species File Online is followed. The genus Shelfordella Adelung, 1910 then includes three species. Synonyms of Shelfordella lateralis are S. ahngeri Adelung, 1910, S. sillemi (Hanitsch, 1935), S. tartara (Saussure, 1874), S. zarudnyi Adelung, 1910. Shelfordella tartara is the common name of the previously often used synonymous name "Tartar cockroach" derived.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Philippe Grand Colas (1994): Blattaria (Insecta: Dictyoptera) of Saudi Arabia: a preliminary report. Fauna of Saudi Arabia 14: 40-58.
  2. ↑ a b Donald D. Chochran: Cockroaches: Their biology, distribution and control. WHO World Health Organization, 1999.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Tina Kim & Michael K. Rust (2013): Life History and Biology of the Invasive Turkestan Cockroach (Dictyoptera: Blattidae). Journal of Economic Entomology 106 (6): 2428-2432. doi: 10.1603 / EC13052
  4. ↑ Saedeh Sadat Hashemi-Aghdam, Golnaz Rafie, Sanaz Akbari, Mohammad Ali Oshaghi (2016): Utility of mtDNA-COI Barcode Region for Phylogenetic Relationship and Diagnosis of Five Common Pest Cockroaches. Journal of Arthropod-Borne Diseases, in press. Download PDF
  5. ↑ a b species Shelfordella lateralis (Walker, 1868). Cockroach Species File online (Version 5.0 / 5.0) edited by George Beccaloni, David C. Eades, Heidi Hopkins accessed on February 23, 2017.
  6. ^ Lonnie A. Rios & Jeffrey Y. Honda (2013): New records for Blatta lateralis (Walker 1868) (Blattaria: Blattidae) in California. Pan-Pacific Entomologist 89 (2): 120-121. doi: 10.3956 / 2012-57.1
  7. ↑ Thomas H. Atkinson, Philip G. Koehler, Richard S. Patterson (1991): Catalog and atlas of the cockroaches (Dictyoptera) of North America north of Mexico. Miscellaneous publications of the Entomological Society of America, no. 78. 85 pages.
  8. ↑ a b Christoph Bühler, Nicolas Martinez, Stefan Birrer: Dealing with exotic small invertebrates: Sectors - Risks - Prevention. Project report on behalf of the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, Biotechnology Section. Reinach, February 2014. 61 pages.
  9. ↑ Horst Bohn: Blattoptera - cockroaches. In: Stresemann - Exkursionsfauna von Deutschland, Volume 2: Invertebrates: Insects. Springer-Verlag, 2011. ISBN 978-3-8274-2452-5 .
  10. ↑ F. Fois, D. Cillo, P. Piras, G. Scano, AM Deiana (2009): Note sulla recente introduzione di Shelfordella lateralis (Blattaria, Blattidae) in Sardegna: attuale distribuzione e considerazioni bio-ecologiche. Poster presented at the Congresso Nazionale Italiano the Entomologia, Ancona, July 2009.
  11. ↑ Srinivas Kambhampati (1995): A phylogeny of cockroaches and related insects based on DNA sequence of mitochondrial ribosomal RNA genes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 92: 2017–2020.
  12. ↑ Daegan Inward, George Beccaloni, Paul Eggleton (2007): Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches. Biology Letters 3: 331-335. doi: 10.1098 / rsbl.2007.0102
  13. ↑ Marie Djernæs, Klaus-Dieter Klass, D. Mike Picker, Jakob Damgaard (2011): Phylogeny of cockroaches (Insecta, Dictyoptera, Blattodea), with placement of aberrant taxa and exploration of out-group sampling. Systematic Entomology 37 (1): 65-83. doi: 10.1111 / j.1365-3113.2011.00598.x

Web links

Commons : Blatta lateralis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files