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Cryptocercus - wood eating roach
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Cryptocercus is a genus of the wood-eating cockroaches. As with termites (and most - perhaps all - herbivores), the wood-eating roaches cannot produce the enzymes which are needed to digest plant cell walls. They are dependent on communities of micro-organisms which live symbiotically within the intestines. The wood-eating roaches have microbial communities rich in the types of flagellates which are found also in the guts of termites. The flagellates of this particular american species were intensively investigated by Cleveland, who used the opportunity to come up with many ideas about the origins of sexuality. Image modified after an original by E. Pratt published in Cleveland, L. R. 1934. The wood-feeding roach Cryptocercus, its protozoa and the symbiosis between protozoa and roach. Mem. Am. Acad. Arts Sci. 17: 1-342. Original copyright by Lemuel R. Cleveland appears not to have been renewed and the image is therefore in the public domain.
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