Ergaula cf. silphoides (Nakhon Ratchasima)
Welcome to my first blog update of 2023… already a bit late to be the first, but its only because I have only recently returned back from a 52 day long holiday in Thailand. My biggest ever holiday and it felt sooo gooooooodddd after such a long time (3 years) stuck in such a small city like Macau. But that nightmare is all now in the past!
This post (and the next ones to follow) is to put you all up to date with all my recent finds during my trip in Thailand.
Immediately after landing in Bangkok, I made my way to Nakhon Ratchasima region, where my wife is from. 3 hours later, I arrived at her home town village.
Northeastern Region of Thailand is mainly located on the Khorat Plateau. The plateau forms a natural historical barrier controlling access to and from the area.
There are three seasons each year. The rainy season is from May to October, the cool season from October to February, and the hot season from February to May. The average temperature range is from 30.2°C (86.4°F) to 19.6°C (67.3° F).
The whole region is characterized by mix of farmland with the remains of deciduous forest pockets. And it was in one of these pockets I caught my first species of the trip.
Precise location where I found this species. They were hidden under the logs.
On my first night out there, I got 3 adult females! And one was laying an ootheca, which made extra happy.
Adult Ergaula silphoides females
Of course, I didn’t knew what exact species they were, but I knew there were Ergaula.
At first I thought they were E.pilosa, but my good friend Invertebrate Dude (TJ) immediately corrected me and helped to ID them as being potentially E.silphoides, one of two species which occurs in Thailand.
Ergaula silphoides adult female
Ergaula silphoides adult female
One thing to bare in mind when looking at these photos, is that, this is not their real coloration as their bodies are completely covered with clay. I tried to remove most of it, but it was impossible to fully remove it.
Going back to its identification problems - Cockroach Species File - genus Ergaula Walker, 1868 - you can see the list of Ergaula species. As I mentioned before only two are being referenced occuring in Thailand.
1 - Ergaula silphoides - Cockroach Species File
2 - Ergaula capucina - Cockroach Species File
As you may be able to notice, the Ergaula capucina has very strong indentations on its pronotum and an overall reddish /brown coloration, while both E.silphoides wild caught individual and CSF individual don’t show any of those indentations, the pronotum is generally very well rounded, and its overall coloration is darker brown/black.
Another big difference lays in its size difference.
Ergaula silphoides (32mm long / 21.5mm wide) ; Ergaula capucina (26.5mm long / 17.0mm wide)
Walker, F. 1868. Catalogue of the Specimens of Blattariae in the Collection of the British Museum 182 >> Polyphaga silphoides
I was quite happy to have found a potentially new species for the hobby (or so I thought), that I continued to try and collect more individuals to establish a good sized colony. And so I did.
In total I captured 5 adult females, 3 male nymphs, 3 female nymphs and one baby nymph.
During the whole duration of my holidays, the 5 adult females layed 22 othecas.
Ergaula silphoides oothecas
Having lay so many oothecas, I decided to return all the females back to the wild, to reduce the impact of my earlier actions. I kept all the oothecas and the nymphs.
Ergaula silphoides composition
And I am now waiting for two events:
seeing a mature male and a mature female (without all the dirt) which shouldn’t take much longer
hatching all my oothecas, which i hope within 2 months more will all be out and running.
I will then start selling some of my nymphs in order to spread this species around the other hobbyists.
And this leads me to my final point of this post.
It seems that some Japanese keepers may already have this species. After a quick google search, I found two interesting links.
1 - WEBSITE 1
Interestingly, in the first website, the keeper decides to call them “Black Capucina” as he seems confused about what they really are, even after receiving them from someone in the roach scientific community.
On the second website, the keeper also questions what species he has in his collection.
I am very curious to see how close both the male and female will look compared to the photo above.
Well, this will be all for this post, I hope you have enjoyed, thank you very much for your time and let me know if you are interested in getting some nymphs in the future!
Cheers!