Word: rothe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Lately, the mail has held quite a few specimens for Roth. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent him some cockroaches found in Florida, with a request for identification. He looked at the specimens and decided that they were German cockroaches, but the USDA wrote back, saying that the insect was not behaving like the German roach. Unlike this common species, these cockroaches are attracted to light...
...Roth looked at the specimens again and decided that they might be Asian cockroaches, which had never before been seen in America. He sent the specimens to a Japanese entomologist who confirmed that it was indeed the species Roth suspected it to be. Roth and USDA officials speculate that this roach species was recently produced to America...
USDA officials say that Roth's work was instrumental in helping them decide how to approach the growing cockroach infestation problem in Florida. "[The Asian cockroach] has a present potential to be a pest problem, so [Roth's] work is very significant in defining the pest problem," says Richard Patterson, research leader at the USDA's division on insects affecting man and animals...
Identifying a cockroach is no simple task. There are currently about 4000 described cockroach species, and Roth says he thinks there are "at least twice as many undescribed species." A biologist must determine that the organism has not previously been assigned to a species before he or she can say it is a new species. To ensure this, the entomologist must turn to detailed descriptions of the species prepared by his colleagues...
...many insect researchers, Roth is often that colleague. Currently he is working on describing a species found on the Island of Krakatau, where the environment was destroyed by a volcanic eruption about 100 years ago. He suspects that the species now inhabiting the island emigrated from one of the neighboring islands, such as Java or Sumatra...