Five new speicies of soil burrowing cockroaches from Queensland (Blattodea: Blaberidae: Geoscapheinae)

Abstract

Five new species of soil burrowing Geoscapheinae are described from Queensland: Macropanesthia intermorpha, M. lineopunctata, M. mutica, M. spuritegmina, and Neogeoscapheus hanni. Redescriptions of subfamilies Panesthiinae and Geoscapheinae are given, and a key to the genera of Geoscapheinae and keys to species of Macropanesthia and Neogeoscapheus are provided.  Blattodea, Blaberidae, Geoscapheinae, Panesthiinae, Australian ground burrowing cockroaches Within the cockroach family Blaberidae, the subfamily Geoscapheinae is an Australian endemic group of cockroaches living in perm­ anent burrows in sandy or loamy soils; their diet is dry leaves. The subfamily Panesthiinae occurs in India, Tibet, China, Japan, South East Asia, the island of New Guinea, Indonesia, Australia and some Pacific islands; most feed on rotting wood and two species are known to feed on dry leaves. The two subfamilies have close genetic affinities (Maekawa et al., 2003). Morphologically, the two subfamilies are very similar and the taxonomic division is based on two characters. The first is related to the absence of wings or tegmina in Geoscapheinae, and their presence or absence in Panesthiinae. Those Panesthia lacking wings or tegmina were differentiated from Geoscapheinae using the second character which relates to the laterocaudal angle of tergite 7. Roth (1977) differentiated Australian Panesthia from Geoscapheinae mainly on the basis of the laterocaudal angle of tergite 7: in Panesthiinae, if such a process is produced, it is directed caudally and not upwards, whereas in Geoscapheinae this process is ‘directed laterally or obliquely, and slightly or strongly dorsad’. This character was no longer useful in 1994 when Walker et al. described new species of Geoscapheinae, one of which had laterocaudal angles of tergite 7 produced acutely and directed ventrocaudally. In this paper we describe five new species of Geoscapheinae, one with processes at the laterocaudal angle of tergite 7 only very weakly produced, and we have therefore modified the descriptions of Australian Panesthiinae and Geoscapheinae to accommodate all known species. Herein are four new species of Macropanesthia from central and northern Rose, Walker & Woodward 12 Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Nature  2014  59 Queensland and one new Neogeoscapheus from northern Queensland, bringing the total number of Geoscapheinae to 24. Keys to Macropanesthia and Neogeoscapheus from Walker et al. (1994) have been modified. These are for adult specimens only, but may also be effective when applied to some late instar nymphs. Measurements are in millimetres and scale bars represent 5 mm. In descriptions of males, measurements of the holotype are given and those of paratypes are in brackets. Measurements of females refer to paratypes. Numbers of paratypes measured are in brackets. Terminology used for male genital phallomeres is that of McKittrick (1964) and Roth (1977).