Abstract
Subsocial, xylophagous cockroaches of the genus Cryptocercus exhibit a disjunct distribution, with representatives in mature montane forests of North America, China, Korea and the Russian Far East. All described species are wingless and dependent on rotting wood for food and shelter at all stages of their life cycle; consequently, their distribution is tied to that of forests and strongly influenced by palaeogeographical events. Asian and American lineages form distinct monophyletic groups, comprised of populations with complex geographic substructuring. We review the phylogeny and distribution of Cryptocercus, and discuss splitting events inferred from molecular data.
Highlights
Woodroaches of the genus Cryptocercus (Dictyoptera: Cryptocercidae) are subsocial, xylophagous cockroaches that occur in mountain forests of temperate regions, living in galleries that they chew within rotten logs [1,2,3,4,5]
It is likely that their distributional pattern has been strongly affected by palaeogeographic events that influenced their source tree hosts, such as the appearance of land bridges or the uplift of mountains. Both North American [7,8,9,10,11] and Asian taxa [10,12] have been the subjects of independent phylogeographic analyses, and the phylogenetic relationships and divergence times within and between Palaearctic and Nearctic taxa have been analyzed based on molecular data [13]
Despite being geographically proximate to one another, C. primarius samples from the Yunnan region in China were genetically distant, and precise phylogenetic relationships among the Asian species (C. primarius, C. relictus and C. kyebangensis used in this study) were not clearly delineated
Summary
Woodroaches of the genus Cryptocercus (Dictyoptera: Cryptocercidae) are subsocial, xylophagous cockroaches that occur in mountain forests of temperate regions, living in galleries that they chew within rotten logs [1,2,3,4,5]. It is likely that their distributional pattern has been strongly affected by palaeogeographic events that influenced their source tree hosts, such as the appearance of land bridges or the uplift of mountains. Both North American [7,8,9,10,11] and Asian taxa [10,12] have been the subjects of independent phylogeographic analyses, and the phylogenetic relationships and divergence times within and between Palaearctic and Nearctic taxa have been analyzed based on molecular data [13]. We review the distribution and phylogeny of Cryptocercus (1) worldwide, (2) in the Palaearctic, and (3) in the Nearctic
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