Word: cockroaches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Army officials later considered using the chemical substance as a lure for cockroaches. "They plugged it as a bigger and better mousetrap, but I knew it wouldn't work," Roth says. Because one male can inseminate a number of females, the proposed cockroach trap would probably have little effect on reducing an infestation, he explains...
...addition, research has shown that a large percentage of American cockroach eggs hatch even if they are not fertilized by a male. Referring to the army's proposal to use the sex attractant as a pesticide, Roth says, "I had a vision whereby eliminating males, you could create a super race of females...
Roth remembers another incident regarding his controversial paper on cockroach reproductive behavior. A friend saw that the paper was published with the authors' addresses, not the lab's. "He wrote back: 'Dear Lou, What in hell is going on in your basement." Roth laughs and adds that he has attempted to bring his work home, with diastrous results...
Trying to determine the efficacy of a wasp that parasitizes roach eggs, Roth brought home 100 cockroach egg cases and hid them in his basement. He then released 450 wasps in the basement, allowing them to parasitize the eggs. When it came time to collect the egg cases, Roth made two unpromising discoveries: First, that the wasps parasitized less than a third of the egg cases, and second, that he could not find about 20 of the egg cases...
...that Roth works primarily with pinned specimens, he does not have to worry about the insects escaping. While he concedes that he does miss the behavioral studies, he adds that the studying cockroach taxonomy is very important, particularly because so few people are doing it. However, funding for taxonomic research is scarce, and the entire field stands in danger of becoming a science of the past, he says...