Researchers at the University of Sydney found several species of unique forest cockroach on Lord Howe Island in Australia, a endemic species that lived on only one island and was believed to have completely disappeared because of a rat infestation.
Researchers accidentally saw several families of unique cockroaches under one banana tree during an expedition on the island, after checking all the other trees in the area, other families could not be found.
A wingless cockroach is 22 to 40 mm long, told by scientists, and their bodies can vary from red to black with a metal tide, and Australia has 11 species of tree cockroaches of Panesthia, all living inside trees and feeding on rotten logs in tropical and open forests in the north and east of Australia.
Their intestines contain specialized microorganisms that help digest cellulose in wood. Like other cockroaches, females give birth to nymph. They stay in family groups with adult cockroaches.
It was believed that the unique forest cockroach of Lord Howe Island, once widespread throughout the Archipelagic, was extinct after the rats arrived in 1918. Over the next few decades, scattered populations of close relatives were found in the search, but the newly discovered group is genetically different from them.