Cockroach species found to live like ants with workers and a queen

By Michael Marshall

A cluster of cockroaches near their nest entrance in Rio Bigal, Ecuador

Paul Bertner in Hinkelman et al. 2020

Cockroaches can team up. A South American species is the first cockroach known to live in group nests with workers and a queen, like honeybees or leaf-cutter ants.

“All cockroaches are solitary,” says Peter Vršanský at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava – or so everyone thought. “It’s unbelievable. It’s like discovering ants as a group.”

Some animals, such as honeybees, are eusocial: not only do they live in large groups and work together to tend the young, …