is reasonable to posit that a cockroach may define home as anywhere there are a number of other cockroaches living comfortably.

It seems reasonable to assume that there are other messages in this chemical language of which we are not yet aware but that contribute to an insect’s daily perceptions of its world.

It will seldom choose to rest in a space that’s more than 1/2-inch high, or less than 1/16-inch low (Berthold, 1967). One-quarter

dispersal

Cockroach caca can still bring roaches together even after it has been exposed to the air at room temperatures for nearly a year (Metzger, 1995).

aggregation pheromone. It is not a sex pheromone, in that it does not stimulate a roach sexually, but it is what leads roaches to a common harborage, and, of course, the more cockroaches in a given place

When the nymphs are ready to emerge, which can be anywhere from fifteen to ninety days in the ootheca, depending on the species, they begin swallowing air, increasing their size,

The ootheca, itself, is a marvelous construction, designed to offer the right amount of humidity and correct temperature for the fertilized eggs to develop. In the ootheca of the German cockroach, for instance, there is a little space left above the compartment for each egg that has a microscopic opening to the outer air.

A female German roach may produce as many as forty oothecae during a lifetime of one year, and