Cryptocercus Explained

Cryptocercus is a genus of Dictyoptera (cockroaches and allies) and the sole member of its own family Cryptocercidae.^[1] Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches. These roaches are subsocial, their young requiring considerable parental interaction. They also share wood-digesting gut bacteria types with wood-eating termites, and are therefore seen as evidence of a close genetic relationship, that termites are essentially evolved from social cockroaches.^[2]

Cryptocercus is especially notable for sharing numerous characteristics with termites, and phylogenetic studies have shown this genus is more closely related to termites than it is to other cockroaches.^[3] These two lineages probably shared a common ancestor in the early Cretaceous.^[4]

Species

Found in North America and (especially temperate) Asia, there are 12 known species:

• Cryptocercus clevelandi Byers, 1997
• Cryptocercus darwini Burnside, Smith, Kambhampati, 1999
• Cryptocercus garciai Burnside, Smith, Kambhampati, 1999
• Cryptocercus hirtus Grandcolas, Bellés, 2005
• Cryptocercus kyebangensis Grandcolas, 2001
• Cryptocercus matilei Grandcolas, 2000
• Cryptocercus meridianus Grandcolas, Legendre, 2005
• Cryptocercus parvus Grandcolas, Park, 2005
• Cryptocercus primarius Bey-Bienko, 1938
• Cryptocercus punctulatus Scudder, 1862
• Cryptocercus relictus Bey-Bienko, 1935
• Cryptocercus wrighti Burnside, Smith, Kambhampati, 1999

Further reading

• Nalepa, C.A., Byers, G.W., Bandi, C. and Sironi, M. 1997. "Description of Cryptocercus clevelandi (Dictyoptera: Cryptocercidae) from the Northwestern United States, molecular analysis of bacterial symbionts in its fat body, and notes on biology, distribution and biogeography." Annals of the Entomological Society of America. 90:416-424.
• Burnside, C.A., P.T. Smith and S. Kambhampati, 1999. "Three New Species of the Wood Roach, Cryptocercus (Blattodea: Cryptocercidae), from the Eastern United States." The World Wide Web Journal of Biology 4:1

Notes and References

1. Beccaloni, G. & P. Eggleton. (2013). Order Blattodea. In: Zhang, Z.-Q.(Ed.) Animal Biodiversity: An Outline of Higher-level Classification and Survey of Taxonomic Richness (Addenda 2013). Zootaxa 3703(1) 46-48.
2. Daegan Inward, George Beccaloni, and Paul Eggleton (2007) Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches
3. Djernæs, M., et al. 2012. 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.
4. Li . Xin-Ran . 2022 . Phylogeny and age of cockroaches: a reanalysis of mitogenomes with selective fossil calibrations . Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift . 69 . 1 . 1–18 . 10.3897/dez.69.68373 . 1860-1324 . free .