Are these Dubia roaches?

[Murray of the Deep]

is it a palmetto bug?? will they accept carrots and cabbage? or cooked rice?i want to culture them for my frogs!! will they eat?

[JeffreH]

Give me a little time - I'm going to shoot the photo of the adult off to a friend of mine (Kyle Kandilian). As far as I'm concerned, if he doesn't know what species this is, no one will. He's usually pretty prompt to reply to me, but allow for a couple of days in case he's busy and doesn't have time to tend to his emails.

They will accept all of the above food items that you've mentioned. The term 'palmetto bug' can be applied to roaches but is most often used to describe the pest species (American cockroach, Periplaneta americana).

Cooked rice is fine, along with any other grain product. They should eagerly consume anything that you would otherwise offer to crickets or mealworms as food. Carrots, apples, cabbage, etc are all perfectly fine to feed as a moisture source.

Definitely not a giant burrowing cockroach or a beetle mimic...if it was the prior I'd be paying you to ship it to me LOL ; ) We'll see what Kyle says. Insect taxonomy can be pretty challenging, I work with identifying Tachinidae and various hymenoptera almost daily and to differentiate species it can take a lot of keying out and identification of characters under a dissecting microscope. Thankfully, roaches are a little larger and more dramatic in their individual morphologies, but being a species from the Philippines I cannot guarantee that anyone I know in North America can readily ID it on the spot without references.

[JeffreH]

The Roach God has spoken:

"These are either Pycnoscelus surinamensis or P. indicus. The latter is the parent species of the former; P. indicus populations consist of males and females but P. surinamensis is all female. The location suggests there's a strong chance they're either." -Kyle Kandilian

[Murray of the Deep]

The Roach God has spoken:

"These are either Pycnoscelus surinamensis or P. indicus. The latter is the parent species of the former; P. indicus populations consist of males and females but P. surinamensis is all female. The location suggests there's a strong chance they're either." -Kyle Kandilian

thanks a bunch! they are Pycnoscelus surinamensis! and also does it mean that they are different species with all males and female? pretty cool!

[Murray of the Deep]

and also do you mean it can eat live mealworms? or should i kill it?

[JeffreH]

Sorry for the misinterpretation - I was simply saying that anything you would feed TO the mealworms ( fruits, vegetables, etc) can also be fed to the cockroaches. Cockroaches are decomposers by nature and mainly feed on plant matter.

If they are P. surinamensis then they are a parthogenic species. This means that every single one of the cockroaches are female, and have the ability to produce offspring on their own without a male. Makes breeding super easy, because every single adult is a female who can asexually reproduce on her own! Every single offpsring that is produced will be female (thelytoky: thelytokus parthenogensis is the technical name for this phenomena).

A good way to tell if you have one species or the other is to see if babies result from each individual adult. If so, you have all female P. surinamensis. If you have males and females and notice mating or male vs. female genitalia (I can elaborate on this if you'd like) then you have P. indicus.

[Murray of the Deep]

wth they can climb through vaseline petroleum jelly!! i placed a cover and also are they good escape artist and also that's why there are lots of baby down there! cool so will my colony be easy to culture and im having trouble with food! i gave them carrots and they are eating it secretly and 1 died got squished of a carrot! is this normal?and also are they nocturnal?