Bark Cockroach - Laxta tillyardi or L. granicollis
Family Blaberidae
This page contains pictures and information about the Bark Cockroaches that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia. They are also known as Flat Cockroaches.
- Female, body length 25mm
- Male Photo: Keith Power, Toowoomba
- This Friedman's Bark Cockroach does not looks like a cockroach but resemble a Trilobite. They are extremely flattened which is the adaptation of living under loose bark. Adult females are wingless while males are either short-winged or full-winged (we have no male photos on this page yet).
- We found them near the base of a very large gum tree trunk. We saw them when we open a large loose bark of the tree. There were a small group of five or more. They were of different body size and development stages. They them ran away slowly at different directions. Most of them moved to the dirt at the tree trunk base.
- Photos were taken in Fore Road Conservation Area on Mar 2011.
- Reference:
- 1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, p329.
- 2. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p211, plate358.
- 3. The Australian cockroach genus Laxta Walker (Dicyoptera: Blattaria: Blaberidae) - Roth, L.M. 1992, Invertebrate Taxonomy 6: 389-435 [424].
