12/7/2021: Glory of the snow, Periplaneta japonica

I’m going to make a bold and veritable claim: cockroach hobbyists are the most devoted and passionate in the world. The ends that some of the lovely folks I share this hobby with go to to collect and propagate these vilified animals are unrivaled. We have risked our limbs, lives, and sanity for even the possibility of a fleeting opportunity to work with as little as one gravid female of a species for the sake of introducing it to culture. However, sometimes all it takes is the right roach person in the right roach place at the right roach time.

Circa 2013, Periplaneta japonica, the Japanese roach, was noted as established in a small area in New York. Holistically, nobody particularly cared about this invader, as introduced roaches don’t necessarily have the same trophic cascade effect as other invasive species, and New York city is already full of miscellaneous other vermin, human or otherwise. The quirky aspect of this species that made news of its invasion spread into the public eye is its cold tolerance; unlike other Periplaneta in the United States, they are not bound to the direct or residual warmth of human dwellings and can tolerate temperatures below freezing. There are reports of Japanese roaches walking on snow, though I suspect these were not the romanticized “roaches scurrying around in a snowstorm” imagery most imagine and would more likely be individuals crawling across melting snow on warm winter or spring days.

Hobbyist Daniel Kolesnick just so happens to live near the invasion site, and has done the roach hobby the immense favor of collecting starting stock. Periplaneta japonica has been cultured on and off in Europe and US hobbyists did have it for a short time around 2016, but this old stock came from South Korea and not from the introduced US strain.

Periplaneta is one of my favorite roach genera (perhaps top 5?) so having another species in culture has been quite uplifting. Daniel’s commitment to tracking down and collecting an excellent quantity of starting stock cannot be understated, and despite this success earlier in the year his endeavors were unfortunately less fruitful.

From here, it’s just a matter of more people keeping and successfully breeding them. They do seem a little more sensitive than other Periplaneta species, at least in the sense that if temperatures drop a certain amount the culture will switch from year-round reproduction to once a year. I’m not too concerned at the moment as there are many copulating adults and almost mature nymphs, so with a baby boom by luck of sheer numbers they should adapt to captive year-round conditions quickly.

Thank you again Daniel for getting us this species! :)

-Kyle