10/20/2021: Fawning over Florida’s undescribed Euthlastoblatta sp.
This has been my most trip-iferous year and it’s hard to believe I was able to haul my carcass to both Florida and the southwest within 6 months of each other. I find myself reflecting on both as I check colonies collected then, thinking about what took, what didn’t, what I completely messed up, and what has been thriving despite the incessant pessimism in my head.
One of these colonies, though not a direct result of the Florida trip sensu stricto, is a lovely Euthlastoblatta sp. that has been turned up by a few roach hunters in Florida. Among them, the infamous Alan Jeon had encountered them a few times, though I hadn’t seen them on any of my previous trips.
On one of our most memorable trip nights out in the middle of nowhere in Lake Placid, though we had just decided to leave due to not finding anything, Will had found a promising pine tree with exfoliating bark and I changed my mind to go help him poke around for his ever-elusive pseudoscorpions. After all, we came all this way, we might as well put in the effort. The change of heart was rewarded as that tree became the most productive spot of the whole night.
For an hour or two we worked our way around every inch of bark on that two and a half foot diameter living pine, discovering a slew of everything we’d hoped to find and more. It’s still astonishing to me that so many species were utilizing that space; we found at least 4 pseudoscorpion species, numerous springtails, some bizarre xeric isopod species, centipedes, scorpions, and many other invertebrates in what amounted to a 40 square foot space. My transformative experienced happened when I saw some suspiciously long antennae peering out from under a tightly adhered bark piece.
Upon coaxing out the owner, I exclaimed to Alan that I had found some sort of gorgeous roach, too big for Aglaopteryx gemma which also shared that range. Alan was quick to identify it as the probably undescribed Florida Euthlastoblatta, and as it sat in the beam of the headlamp its full glory was on display. Many roaches are reddish, brownish, blackish, or tannish… a lot of ishes, and a lot of colors that tend to help them blend in and not stand out. This subadult Euthlastoblatta was exceptional, as if it was nature’s fiercest attempt to say “You know all those drab colors? Wanna see how definitely NOT drab they can be?” The crisp shininess of the exoskeleton coupled with the boldness, contrast, and ratios of cream, black, white, and rufous meticulously assembled across the body forced me to stop and admire my quarry. Upon preparing to capture it, I realized it was a subadult in premolt (surprising considering how mobile it still was) which made the maneuver extra risky. Fortunately, I was able to pull it off without harming the roach, and with it captured I was permitted to gaze longingly at it indefinitely.
It’s hard for me to place roaches in a “top favorites” list (although I stand by my decision that the entity currently known as Eublaberus sp. “Ivory” is my absolute favorite), I would definitely place the Florida Euthlastoblatta in my top 15. Their colors and patterns embody a bold natural palette that I would say resembles the colors of some reptiles (particularly snake belly patterns) more than other insects. I should also note that “unfortunately”, the adults are relatively drab compared to their young, though the prominent veins on their transparent wing edges are pretty neat.
So no images of these roaches, you ask? Well I couldn’t do much with one specimen, and Alan had a few adults left at home, so after it expired I put the now-adult in ethanol and noted the GPS location, in case it’s required for formal description one day. Alan gifted me his remaining adults at the end of our trip in preparation for his busy grad school lifestyle that was on the horizon, and they produce a fair number of offspring before kicking the bucket. Presently, I’m sitting on about a dozen of them at roughly pre sub-adult, and I think the next wave of babies will be far more substantial with better care, heat, and accommodations. Though not lightning fast or particularly sensitive, I’m trying not to pester them as much as possible to ensure getting a good colony established. Living the work required to collect them was daunting enough and Alan did tell me he’d do atrocious things to me if I failed with them, so avoiding his wrath is the real priority here. A quick web search for Euthlastoblatta diaphana will show a similar species, though the adults and nymphs are not quite as large or striking.
What really got me into doing this post was wondering what an appropriate common name for a roach with no Latin yet would be. At the front of my mind was the awe I felt upon seeing the wild subadult, and I think working off of that is valid where there’s no other precedent. Simple and sweet, I propose the Florida beauty roach.
-Kyle