Latency of Sugar Selection Behavior in German Cockroaches, Blattella germanica (Dictyoptera: Blattellidae)

Abstract

Sugar is a phagostimulant component of cockroaches bait. Knowledge of the chemosensory response of German cockroaches to sugar is necessary to design bait formulations. This study was aimed to determine the behavior of sugar selection by German cockroaches, based on latency parameters toward the bait. Observation methods were done using behavior sampling with CCTV cameras. Observations were made on fifteen mixed-sex from VCRU, BKL, PDG, JKT-b, and PKU-b strains with the treatment of plain agar and agar containing four types of sugar i.e., glucose, fructose, sucrose, and maltose with a concentration of 1 M each. The observation was carried out for 12 hours. Data were analyzed using Two-way ANOVA followed by the Duncan test for p<0.05. Correlation between sugar and latency was analyzed with redundancy analysis. The result showed that the treatment but not the strain influenced the behavior of latency. The VCRU, BKL, PDG, and JKT-b strain were showed the fastest latency toward maltose and sucrose, while the PKU-b strain was toward plain agar. There was a strong correlation between sugar and latency for 0.77 (axis 1) and 0.61 (axis 2), with a total variance of 89.7% resulted from the redundancy analysis. Those indicate that the German cockroaches perform the sugar selection with a preference of maltose, and sucrose is more stimulating than glucose and fructose.