Animals & nature · 2024
Are dubia roaches more likely to choose a lighter shelter if other roaches have left chemical traces there?
Yes. In laboratory experiments, dubia roaches were more likely to use a lighter shelter when it contained chemical traces from other roaches than when it did not. This happened with traces from their own species and from another species, but the roaches still strongly preferred darker shelters overall. The abstract does not say how large the increase was.
Details
Researchers tested whether chemical traces left by other roaches could influence where Argentinian wood roaches, also called dubia roaches, took shelter. They placed filter paper carrying these traces, or blank paper without them, beneath plastic shelters in laboratory arenas.
In the first experiment, female and male dubia roaches chose between shelters matched for darkness. They overwhelmingly preferred the shelter containing traces from their own species. Separate experiments then offered lighter and darker shelters, using traces from either other dubia roaches or a different species, the death’s head cockroach.
The roaches strongly preferred darker shelters, especially when those shelters contained chemical traces. Yet traces in a lighter shelter also made the roaches more likely to use it. The central finding is that other roaches’ chemical traces can influence shelter choice without eliminating the preference for darkness. These were laboratory tests in dubia roaches; the abstract gives neither sample sizes nor numerical effect estimates, and it does not establish how they would choose shelters in the wild.
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