The Lord Howe Island cockroach Panesthia lata, endemic to the Australian Pacific island of Lord Howe and not seen since the 1930s, was rediscovered in July 2022 when biologist Maxim Adams of the University of Sydney and his team visited the island. As the magazine Spektrum recently reported, they found specimens of the Lord Howe Island cockroach under a stone lying beneath a giant banyan tree.
Until June 15, 1918, the Lord Howe Island cockroach was widespread on the island, but when black rats—and later pigs, goats and cats as well—suddenly reached the island, which had originally been free of mammals apart from one bat species, after a shipwreck near the island, this and other species quickly disappeared. Searches for the Lord Howe Island cockroach in the following years were unsuccessful. Although closely related wood cockroach populations were found on two small islands off the coast of Lord Howe, these differed genetically from the Lord Howe Island cockroaches.
The nearly four-centimeter-long wood cockroach from Lord Howe is one of eleven species of the genus Panesthia found in Australia. Wood cockroaches are cave-dwelling insects that live in rainforest and open woodland in the north and east along Australia’s coast. They feed on decaying wood; special microorganisms in their intestines help them digest the cellulose contained in wood.
With the arrival of rats on Lord Howe Island in the early 20th century, many bird species also became extinct, such as the Lord Howe white-eye (Zosterops strenua), the Lord Howe gerygone (Gerygone insularis) and the Tasman starling (Aplonis fusca). The Lord Howe swamphen had already become extinct at the end of the 18th century, before the island was settled.
Source
- Lingenhöhl, D. (2022, 1. Oktober): Die Rückkehr der Holzschabe. Spektrum.de
https://www.spektrum.de/news/artenschutz-die-rueckkehr-der-riesenkakerlake/2062758
About the author: Doreen Fräßdorf
Doreen Fräßdorf is the author and publisher of artensterben.de. She researches and writes about extinct and endangered species in the modern era, with a focus on red lists, scientific studies, historical sources, and current conservation efforts. The goal is a clear, evidence-based overview of biodiversity loss and species protection.
She is also the author of a non-fiction book about extinct modern-era mammals.
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