11/7/2021: Opening Panchlora’s box (must-read for roach hobbyists!)
About a year ago something whimsically horrible happened. One year ago I realized that one of our most common captive roaches was not what it seemed.
After pestering Satchell Watts-Kerr to collect some of his local Alabama Panchlora for funsies and after waiting several week for the plump subadults to mature, something in my brain began to make a horrible realization.
For a few decades it was assumed that the common, easily reared Panchlora was nivea. Post horrible realization tracking revealed that our hobby Panchlora do not have clear wild origins, which should pique interest when Panchlora nivea is found across most of the southeastern United States and the traditional sources for hobby roaches (zoos and universities) tend to have at least some information about their colony’s origins.
The ecstatic dread really set in one night I decided to flip over an adult male of both lines… and saw two very different roaches underneath.
Hobby skeptics included Alan Jeon and TJ Ombrelle, one of whom (memory betrays me) DARED to accuse me of comparing a female of one colony to a male of the other. Ferocity aside, this isn’t such an unreasonable claim, since the undersides of males and females of the hobby species are surprisingly similar, while females of true nivea resemble the females of the other species. However, after many poor illustrations in Paint to demarcate the abdominal segments, it was finally agreed that we were all looking at two unique roaches.
Where does this leave us? Well, after several decades and multiple sources of mixing both wild strains and the captive strain for sale as the same species, I would think the first thing on most keepers’ agenda is to either track their lines or flip some adult males over to identify them yourself. Personally, as I am obsessively inclined to do, I have not added to my hobby Panchlora colony since its inception circa 2010.
Perhaps most importantly… The hobby species of Panchlora is unidentified, and the only species in Florida (on paper at least, there are surely some pockets of unrecorded introduced species too) is nivea… Meaning there have been some questionable shipments from many parties there out of ignorance for quite some time. I have yet to deliberate on how to approach this situation, although considering nivea is noted as an introduced species in Florida, the hobby species seems to have similar biology, and no Panchlora are recorded as crop pests… functionally it probably doesn’t matter.
So there you have it. With a little paranoia we went from one species of Panchlora to two! I will be adding a few lines of nivea to the site in the near future; they’re a bit longer and lankier than the hobby species, but seem to be just as good for all intents and purposes.
-Kyle