Wood-Eating Cockroach Found Again After 80 Years

The Lord Howe Island wood-feeding cockroach (Panesthia lata) was once widespread across Lord Howe Island, part of an archipelago of more than two dozen islands. Since the 1930s, it was thought to have disappeared. Maxim Adams, a student at the University of Sydney’s School of Biological Sciences, was on the island looking to see if the insects were definitely gone.

Rats were introduced on Lord Howe Island in 1918. The island managed to eradicate the rats with baiting in 2019. Now a rediscovered cockroach population has been discovered. It is genetically different from the ones found earlier. It's amazing that one population managed not to die out despite 100 years of rat predation.

It has been 80 years since the last cockroach was seen on Lord Howe Island. The island is home to 1,600 native invertebrate species, half of which are found nowhere else in the world. The cockroaches are like Darwin's finches, separated on little islands over thousands or millions of years developing their own unique genetics.