Therea petiveriana

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Therea petiveriana
Male above, female below (with shorter antennae)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Blattodea
Family: Corydiidae
Genus: Therea
Species:
T. petiveriana
Binomial name
Therea petiveriana
Synonyms [2]

Corydia petiveriana
Cassida petiveriana

Therea petiveriana, variously called the desert cockroach, seven-spotted cockroach, domino cockroach, or Indian domino cockroach, is a species of

scrub forest habitats where they may burrow under leaf litter or loose soil during the heat of the day.[5]

Description

Pattern of spots on the tegmina

The black and white pattern of adults is believed to have evolved to

ocelli (simple eyes) face forward, helping sense light and thereby time, and they forage actively during early morning and late evening.[5]

Reproduction

Once a female has copulated with a male, she does not allow other males to approach, kicking them away with her hind legs.[8] The eggs are laid in leaf litter.[9] Up to 13 oothecae are produced by a female over 3 to 40 days [5](blocking the ocelli of the females has been found to inhibit the laying of eggs[5]). The oothecae are produced as in other cockroaches by the secretions from the asymmetrical colleterial glands of the females.[10] Once the ootheca is extruded it is deposited in suitably moist leaf litter.[11] Nymphs lead a life hidden below the ground and may go as deep as 30 cm during the dry season.[12]

Taxonomy

This is the

Fort St. George, either Samuel Browne or more likely Edward Bulkley[13]). Carl Linnaeus placed the species under Cassida and described C. petiveriana and another that he called C. septemguttata, now considered a synonym.[1]

Communication

Like other cockroaches, T. petiveriana uses chemical

pheromones to communicate with each other. When disturbed, they are said to raise their wings and evert lateral glands on the second and third abdominal segments. Their glandular secretions were found to contain volatile compounds N-3-methylbutylacetamide (MBA) and N-3-methylbutylpropanamide (MBP), making up nearly 60% of the volatile fraction. These chemicals appeared to induce alarm behaviour.[14]

Digestion

Like

symbiotic bacteria and flagellates in their gut that aid in digestion.[15][16]

As pets

The conspicuously marked Therea cockroaches are popular as pets and easy to keep. The most commonly kept species has often been identified as T. petiveriana, but in 2009 it was instead suggested that the captive population actually belongs to a separate species, T. bernhardti, that differs primarily in the hindwings (which usually are hidden behind the tegmina), but also in small details of the tegmina pattern.[17]

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1975.tb02266.x
    .
  2. ^ "ZooBank".
  3. doi:10.1139/z93-259
    .
  4. S2CID 13719378.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  5. ^
    S2CID 84009370
    .
  6. ^ "Mimicry". Archived from the original on 2011-07-08.
  7. ^ Sharp, David (1895). The Cambridge Natural History. Volume 5. Macmillan and Co. London. pp. 233–234.
  8. S2CID 81843029
    .
  9. ^ Ananthasubramanian, K.S. & T.N. Ananthakrishnan (1959). "The structure of the ootheca and egg laying habits of Corydia petiveriana L". Indian Journal of Entomology. 21: 59–64.
  10. PMID 18089127.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  11. ISBN 978-0-8018-8616-4
    .
  12. ^ Bhoopathy, S. (1997). "Microhabitat preferences among four species of cockroaches". Journal of Nature Conservation. 9: 259–264.
  13. ^ Petiver, James. "An account of Mr Samuel Brown, his Third Book of East India Plants, with their Names Vertues Description, etc". Philosophical Transactions. 22 (271): 843–862.
  14. S2CID 6826801. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-12.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  15. PMID 5709522
    .
  16. PMID 17376757. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-26.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  17. ^ Fritzsche, I. (2009). "A new species of Therea Billberg, 1820 - (Blattodea: Polyphagidae)". Arthropoda. 17 (2): 6–7.
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