Why cockroaches are so resilient
Cockroaches have some of the worst PR in the animal kingdom. With a better agent, their story could be that of a hardy insect that has successfully thrived on every continent except Antarctica. People would talk of the incredible diversity of the 4,600 cockroach species and their elaborate behavioral rituals and social patterns. Instead, the couple dozen roach species that interact with human habitats have stolen the headlines. Cockroaches are instead bywords for filth and grime, with much of our knowledge of these bugs being on how to exterminate them from our homes. What makes cockroaches so successful, and why do the vast majority of these billions of bugs remain a total mystery to science? The most globally dispersed cockroach species–the German cockroach–is a resilient domestic pest. “They’re just basically the perfect kind of species to take over,” says Warren Booth, an urban entomologist. These hardy bugs have a long list of...
