5/3/2022: A new Panchlora species from southern Florida

The bounties of the wild and untamed state of Florida know no bounds.

Following up from the collecting trip last March, colonies of many things collecting them are coming to maturity and giving an excellent opportunity for identifications and observations. Foremost among those, the strange, light-colored Panchlora we collected in Redlands, Florida under the guidance of Carlos Michaelsen are almost certainly an unrecorded species.

Found in rotting Papaya stumps, the minty green adult females were very suspicious, but the big smoking gun as to their uniqueness is the size of the adult males. Compared to nivea from Alabama and many other US locations, the wings are lacking the black spots a little past the middle, but even more telling is the size difference. The adult males of sp. “Redlands” are consistently dramatically smaller than nivea, more in line with the size of sp. “Hobby”. You would think the similarities to sp. “Hobby” would mean those and sp. “Redlands” are the same, but the subanal plate of sp. “Redlands” is squared just like in nivea and the majority of other captive Panchlora sp. Thus, in very short time the cockroach hobby has gained many Panchlora species, many of which are extremely similar but with a handful of big differences!

Perhaps in the next few years a Panchlora specialist will appear from the shadows to shed some light on the identities of our quickly growing number of cultured species… Until then, our locality/strain labels will hopefully maintain some semblance of organization.

-Kyle