A Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia

About this book

Cockroaches! Even a mere mention of the word causes many people to recoil in horror. However, of the hundreds of species of cockroaches (or blattodeans as they are known) found in Australia, only a small number of them give the group a bad name. Just a few species that are commonly found in homes, restaurants and hospitals are responsible for thousands of dollars in expenditure to comply with health standards.

A Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia is a comprehensive account of most of the 550 described species found in Australia. A Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia reveals their diversity and beauty, it looks in detail at their morphology, habitats and ecology, and explains how to collect and preserve them. Importantly, it will allow pest controllers, students and researchers to reliably identify most of the common pest species as well as the non-pest cockroaches. It will also, perhaps, go some way towards elevating the reputation of these much-maligned insects, and promote further study of them.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

1 Introduction
2 Cockroach 'personalities'
3 Biology
4 Economic Importance
5 Australian cockroaches in captivity (by Deanna Henderson)
6 Collection and Preservation
7 Habitats and ecology
8 Morphology
9 Cockroach identification

Customer Reviews

Biography

David Rentz AM specialises in katydids, crickets and other members of the suborder Ensifera. He spent 25 years as Curator of Orthopteroid Insects in the Australian National Insect Collection, Canberra. David is currently an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and an Honorary Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. He is the author of A Guide to the Katydids of Australia, which won a Whitley Award commendation for best field guide, and in 2011 he and his colleague Dr Darryl Gwynne were awarded an Ig-Nobel Prize for their study ‘Beetles on the Bottle’. David was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2013.