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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...
...fact, the Harvard entomologist has so many requests to identify species that he must turn some down. Recently, Roth had to decline an invitation to study some specimens found on an expedition conducted by the Russian Academy of Sciences--the same institution he wrote to several years ago asking for a specimen he was interested in studying. "We didn't have glasnost then, and I'm sure the minute they saw the U.S. Army letterhead...I never heard from the man," he says...
What has been occupying most of Roth's time these days is a much more extensive research project--the revision of an entire family of Australian cockroaches. The project is based out of the centerpiece of Roth's MCZ office, a cabinet about four-feet high with four compartments, each holding about 20 trays of pinned cockroach specimens. totaling about 6000 specimens...
...doubt I'll ever finish it," he says of the study, which he began in 1982 at the behest of the Australian government. Roth currently examines pinned cockroaches, and if there is enough specimen, he prepares slides of the insect's glands to aid in classification of the various species...