Cockroache; Ecology, behavior & history - W.J. Bell

THREE
Habitats
Of no other type of insect can it be said that it occurs at every horizon where insects
have been found in any numbers.
—S.H. Scudder, “The Cockroach of the Past”
Cockroaches are found in nearly all habitats: tropical and temperate forests, grasslands,
heath, steppe, salt marshes, coastal communities, and deserts. They are active in the entire
vertical dimension of the terrestrial environment, from the upper forest canopy to
deep in the soil, and inhabit caves, mines, hollow trees, burrows, and sub-bark spaces.
They are also found in dead leaves, rotting logs, streams and stream edges, epiphytes, arboreal
water pools, the nests of social insects, rodents, reptiles, and birds, and humanmade
structures such as dwellings, ships, and aircraft (Roth and Willis, 1960). Cockroaches
occur between latitudes 60N and 50S, but most are found between 30N and
30S in the warm, humid regions of the Old World (Africa) and tropical America
(Guthrie and Tindall, 1968); they are less diverse in the temperate regions. Wolda et al.
(1983) cites the number of species captured at various latitudes in Central and North
America: 64 in Panama, 31 in Texas, 14 in Illinois, 9 in Michigan, 5 in Minnesota, and 2
in North Dakota. In the high arctic, pest cockroaches readily invade heated structures
(Beebe, 1953; Danks, 1981), but several species are physiologically capable of dealing with
extremely cold weather in their natural environment (e.g., Celatoblatta quinquemaculata—Worland
et al., 2004). The general tendency is to live near sea level, where temperatures
are higher (Boyer and Rivault, 2003). In his collections on Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo,
Hanitsch (1933) found 19 cockroach species up to an altitude of 2135 m, but only
three species above it. Light trap catches in Panama also indicate higher diversity in lowland
than in mountain sites (Wolda et al., 1983). In Hawaii, Allacta similis was found no
higher than 1600 m along an altitudinal transect and was thought to be excluded from
higher altitudes by the cooler, wetter, montane environment (Gagné, 1979). Nonetheless,
the relationship of cockroaches with altitude can be complex. On Volcán Barva in Costa
Rica, no cockroaches were found at the lowest elevation sampled (100 m), but they were
present at all other elevations (Atkin and Proctor, 1988). There are also montane specialists,
such as Eupolyphaga everestiana on Mount Everest at 5640 m (Chopard, 1929).
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