Molecular Love (and other facts of life)

*shudder*
Image by David Monniaux via Wikimedia

How can I get even more cockroaches in my apartment? is a question I’m sure all of you have asked at one time or another. The good news is, all you need to speed up roach production is…other roaches! Or, at least, some bugs about the size of a roach.

The study, published this month in PLoS One, was conducted by Adrienn Uzsák and Coby Schal at North Carolina University…and some lovely German cockroaches. They found that when female cockroaches socialize, they produce eggs faster. And they don’t even have to socialize with other roaches! It just has to be an insect of roughly the same size and shape.

The researchers observed, as so many of us unfortunately have in the past, that cockroaches tend to hang out in groups. Rarely, if ever, do you find just one cockroach in your home. As they say, when it rains, it pours a crapload of cockroaches. In social insects, living in groups has many different effects on the bugs’ behavior and biology. For example, the group dynamic can change how each insect finds and handles food, their choice of mates, and how prepared their body is for baby-making. Cockroaches that are raised in groups even develop faster than roaches raised in isolation. Or, if a group isn’t available, then a good feather-poke can do the trick. Continue reading →