Hello! At one time, I had to develop effective ways to deal with home cockroaches.
To begin with, I delved deeply into the theoretical part of the question. She studied the structure of insects, their life cycle, preferences in nutrition and habitat.
With this knowledge, it has become much easier to deal with cockroaches. Now they don’t bother me. Want to know how domestic cockroaches breed? How to use this to deal with them? Now I will write everything as detailed as possible below.
The content of the article:
Cockroaches at home
Cockroaches are one of the most tenacious insects. If you have cockroaches in your home, getting them out is not so simple. Most often, it costs only one cockroach to appear in your house, as in a short time they will fill everything.
In the world there are more than five thousand species of cockroaches. You can see the varieties of cockroaches in the photo below. But about this in order.
The body of the cockroaches is flat and oval, from 4 mm to 9.5 cm in length. Their head is flat, triangular or heart-shaped. The oral opening faces the bottom and is covered by a shield-shaped pronotum. Cockroaches have gnawing mouth organs.
The Madagascar cockroach, the photo of which is below, is one of the largest of all existing species, so it’s worth looking at what this cockroach looks like and know the enemy “in person”. These large cockroaches in the apartment are rare for joy, and if they appear, then isolated cases.
In our houses you can find only two varieties of these insects - black (kitchen) and red (Prusak). The black cockroach photo, which you can see on the left in the picture, is larger than the red one. It reaches 2.5-3 cm in length. Let's try to describe how small cockroaches look.
Thanks to the flattened body, cockroaches can climb into the narrowest slots, and with the help of a special device of the legs, they can move along steep surfaces. See a photo of a cockroach:
Where do they come from
If you already had experience with these insects, then you know that they run very fast. It is difficult to say where the cockroaches come from, since there are a lot of reasons for their appearance. The reason for their appearance may be:
- not washed dishes on time;
- garbage not thrown away;
- caught in a bag at work or picked up on a business trip;
- it often happens that they simply run away from their neighbors.
Once a cockroach gets to your house, most likely there will be a lot of them and you will be wondering why cockroaches start if "everything is always clean with us." But it also happens that absolutely ambitious families are faced with the problems of these insects, which breed well very quickly.
How to breed
Each female cockroach can produce up to 40 new individuals at a time, the exact amount depends on how many cockroaches are in the egg (the sac that the female carries). During her life, the female lays three to four egg capsules. At the same time, keep in mind that it’s not easy to find cockroach larvae, but cockroaches breed in houses all year round.
Cockroaches can damage not only food, but also leather products, book bindings, indoor and greenhouse plants. Some cockroaches live and feed on various debris, including feces, which is why they become carriers of infectious diseases (such as dysentery and egg eggs).
How many live
There is a legend that cockroaches appeared earlier than dinosaurs, in contrast to which they survived. Another distinctive feature of cockroaches is their survivability, thanks to which they can easily adapt to everything. Although they need certain conditions for a comfortable life. Among these conditions are food and moisture.
By the way, do you know how long a cockroach lives? The life span of this insect depends on the availability of food. Prusak without nutrition survives 40 days, the kitchen can live without food for up to 70 days. Hungry black cockroaches in an apartment become even more dangerous. They not only eat each other, but also bite people.
These insects have another interesting feature, they can live without a head. Can you imagine how it looks and how long a cockroach lives without a head? However, some studies prove that a cockroach lives without a head for several weeks. What is the reason for this?
After the ram loses its head, a clot appears in this place. A cockroach can breathe through microscopic holes throughout the body. And it doesn’t matter how long Madagascar cockroaches live without a head, since even without this seemingly very important part of the body, they have elementary reflexes.
This is due to the fact that the nerve nodes are distributed throughout the body of these insects. Moreover, the head also continues to live for several hours after separation from the body. And if you conduct an experiment and put your head in the refrigerator, providing food, then this time will increase.
At the same time, scientists have proved that cockroaches have an excellent memory and if they lack at least some part of the body, then they lose their ability to learn and are much worse oriented in the world around them.
Prusak bites
As we already said, cockroaches can bite people if they lack food or water. How to bite cockroaches:
- Cockroaches bite off the skin from the lips, eyelids, elbows and neck. Cockroach bites on the body are crusty and can become inflamed.
- Cockroaches can bite in sleeping people (especially in children) lips and skin near the eyes and nails.
- Cockroaches can gnaw the epidermis in the nasolabial triangle in a child and cause infection. Moreover, they can bite the eyelashes of a sleeping child, damage the corns on the arms and legs, can cause a small wound on soft skin.
- A cockroach bite can cause irritation and damage to the skin and swelling.
A cockroach can also feed on secretions from the human body. This may be saliva, food debris on the body, discharge from the eyes, excrement, etc.
Cockroach Allergy
Cockroaches can cause allergies in humans.Cockroaches can enter the human body in several ways, including: inhalation, contact, and with food. Based on statistics, doctors claim that 60 percent of Americans who have asthma and live in metropolitan areas have an allergic reaction to cockroaches.
In people with an allergy to cockroaches, clinical manifestations in the form of asthma attacks during cleaning in places where cockroaches are accumulated can be observed. To protect yourself from allergies to cockroaches, we recommend:
- keep the plumbing in good condition.
- Do not leave uncleaned dishes, dirty dishes on tables and in the sink.
- throw garbage in a timely manner, since cockroaches are started primarily in the places of garbage accumulation. Of course, because it is there that they can find something to profit from.
- Keep the trash hatches and trash cans (containers) tightly closed.
These tips will help you prevent cockroaches and, as a result, protect yourself from allergies and other negative manifestations of the presence of these insects in your home.
Where are they hiding
The main danger of living together with cockroaches is that they climb into the toilet bowls, garbage cans and other places where bacteria accumulate, and as a result, they are carriers.
As we have already said, the reproduction of cockroaches is very fast. In addition, their excrement contains enzymes that attract other individuals.
How to detect
Despite the fact that most of them know what cockroaches look like, immediately finding them is not at all easy. Usually we notice cockroaches when they are already "hosting" in the kitchen. There are several signs by which you can find out where the cockroaches live:
- black dots (feces) appeared on furniture, utensils or wallpaper;
- the presence of a specific smell;
- cockroach eggs and others appeared in the corners and crevices.
But more often than not, we do not pay attention to these insignificant signs until we meet the new residents of the house in person. And if you saw one cockroach, be sure to take measures, it is worth inspecting all the cabinets, and the dark corners, also in the place where the cockroach was found it is advisable to wash the dishes, inspect the products.
Cockroach Egg Fight
Why, even after serious handling, cockroaches return again to our apartments? There can be many reasons for this, and one of them is the emergence of new individuals from eggs that cannot destroy most modern means of deratization.
How does the development cycle of cockroaches take place and what are their eggs? This is necessary to know in order to effectively combat these annoying insects.
Propagation Features
Once in the apartment, cockroaches begin to look for a secluded place for breeding. Enough and one fertilized female to colonize in just 2 months.
For offspring, cockroaches pick up dark and warm places:
- In cracked plaster
- Behind the tiles
- From the inside of the old wallpaper
- On the back of the furniture
- In books
- In the gaps between the floor and the plinth
- In ventilation ducts
- Under the sinks and bathtub
Cockroaches are characterized by sexual dimorphism - the female is larger than the male in size. She cannot fly, while males carry out small flights.
A sexually mature female gives off an odorous substance that attracts the male and flaps its wings slightly, inviting them to mate. The male fertilizes the female through the genital plate.
The female lays eggs in an elongated chitinous bag - the ooteca, which drags along with itself until the moment when larvae should hatch from them. If you watched ginger cockroaches-Prussians, then you probably saw insects with a swot that is located in the back of the body and is attached by the sticky substance secreted by the insect. Destroying one such female, you destroy a whole brood of cockroaches.
In one ooteca can be from 20 to 60 eggs. How many cockroaches hatch from one egg? Only one larva hatches from one egg. If we consider that a female can postpone up to 10 ootec during her life, then it becomes clear why cockroaches conquer space so quickly.
The female carries an odeka from 2 to 6 months. The more favorable living conditions, the faster the development of insect larvae. A “pregnant” female needs food, water and heat.
Before the larvae are born, the female Prusaka climbs into a protected place, where it leaves an edema until the larvae hatch from the eggs. Black cockroaches are more caring parents and protect not only the masonry, but also small cubs.
Cockroaches belong to the group of insects with an incomplete transformation cycle. They do not go through the caterpillar stage. Small cockroaches - nymphs - are born that, after a few links, reach the size of an adult.
As a rule, this period lasts several months. From the first days, nymphs lead a lifestyle similar to their parents - they feed on the remnants of food, are active in the dark.
Adverse environmental factors delay the growth of nymphs - low temperature, lack of food and water, the use of chemical insect control agents. Already at a temperature of +15 degrees their development is inhibited for up to 12 months. By preventing nymphs from becoming sexually mature, you are holding back the growth of an insect colony in your home.
What are they?
What do cockroach eggs look like? Eggs of red cockroaches are protected by several shells from adverse conditions and for maximum survival of offspring. Through chitin, the blood flow and the integumentary membrane do not affect the embryos:
- Chemicals
- Water
- Squeeze factor
- Pathogenic viruses
However, the protective covers have special perforations through which the air necessary for its development enters the embryo.
In the egg, the larvae develop for several weeks, and then come into the light. In nature, there are very few predators that hunt for cockroach eggs. Such an evolutionary course has helped insects to survive safely on earth for millions of years.
How to fight with eggs?
Given the characteristics of the reproduction and development of cockroaches, you can determine an effective strategy for controlling insects.
Most of all, cockroaches do not like a clean house, where there is no crowded bin, dirty dishes in the sink, and all food products are securely packed and closed. If cockroaches live in the apartment near the neighbors or the entrance, then preventive treatment with gels and crayons should be carried out, poisonous and glue traps should be laid out.
This will destroy the adults who have entered your home. Thus, an entire colony cannot multiply in it. When cockroaches appear, you can treat the room with aerosols. Insects quickly die from suffocation - the females do not have time to hide in a secluded place to drop the oocyte.
The eggs of these insects are not afraid of exposure to chemicals, but are not resistant to mechanical methods. Regular ventilation of the room with frosty air can be fatal for egg laying.If possible, you should vacuum all possible breeding sites for cockroaches with special narrow nozzles.
You can not be limited to one treatment of the apartment, carried out at regular intervals of 3 to 4 treatments will destroy the nymphs that hatched from the eggs.
So, when fighting cockroaches, do not forget about their egg-laying, which also needs to be eliminated in order to rid your home of unpleasant insects.
How do home-grown Prussians breed?
The struggle of man with cockroaches has been going on for many centuries. People who had to deal with cockroaches in the apartment, from the mere mention of these insects throws a nervous shiver. Cockroaches can significantly worsen a person’s quality of life, as well as take him out of emotional balance.
How to distinguish a male from a female?
And, although if you find cockroaches in your apartment, you are unlikely to want to find out which of them is male and which is female. However, we will still tell you this information.
Males are capable of even small flights to attract the attention of females. Some species of cockroaches during mating make loud menacing sounds or even arrange real battles, which are also aimed at attracting females and further breeding.
How does fertilization of females occur?
Cockroaches reproduce sexually. After one fertilization, the female is able to bear fruit several times, and the next fertilization does not require the help of the male, since she is able to keep the gametes of the male in her body for a rather long time.
She lays eggs, which are enclosed in a special protective shell. Cockroaches are born in the form of larvae, which during their whole life pass a certain number of molts, eventually turning, in this way, into an adult.
Why do they seek human dwelling?
Well, everything is simple: cockroaches come to a person in search of water and food, as well as in order to hide from adverse natural phenomena.
Therefore, cockroaches will try their best to stay in your apartment as much as possible.
If you had to encounter cockroaches in the apartment, we recommend that you do not wait until they leave your apartment on their own. You need to purchase professional remedies for cockroaches or order pest control services.
How cockroaches breed
Cockroaches are one of the most rapidly breeding domestic parasites. It is worth having one pregnant female in the house, as the appearance of a huge population becomes inevitable.
You can understand that a cockroach ran past you, and not some other parasite, in appearance.
They look like this:
- Flat elongated body of oval shape.
- The flat head is triangular in shape.
- Gnawing mouth opening turned down.
- Mostly black or red.
Kinds
At home, you can find two types of cockroaches:
- Big black ones.
- Redheads (Prussians).
Black cockroaches reach 2.5-3 centimeters in length. Of the parasites that wind up at home, they are the largest. Most often they live and breed in kitchens, which is why they are sometimes called kitchen.
They are about half the size of blacks, but this is their main advantage. Due to the size of the larger population of red cockroaches, less space is needed.Red cockroaches can get twice as many.
Breeding cycle
Reproduction of cockroaches is carried out sexually, as with any other living creatures. The breeding process begins with mating games, after which the male and female mate. After one mating session, the female without the male will be able to fertilize several more times.
The process of reproduction and development of small cockroaches is as follows:
- Females lay eggs in special leathery bags - ooteks. Red and black cockroaches carry eggs with them, while other individuals prefer to hide them in secluded places.
- The formed embryos hatch from the leathery sacs 2-3 weeks after masonry.
- Larvae develop and molt several times. Such larvae are called nymphs; they look like miniature adults.
- Large adult individuals are formed, which are called adults.
In one egg, the female black cockroach carries 10-20 larvae, and the female red - 20-30. At one time, the female can produce up to forty new embryos. As much as will be enough to develop a population that will soon flood your apartment.
Cockroaches do not have specific seasons in which they breed. The process is observed year-round, which may complicate the fight with them. If you miss the moment when they just appeared at your place, the population will grow rapidly. Radical means to deal with them will be required from the very beginning.
Life cycle of parasites
When fighting with them, you need to know how much they live and how much they can stretch without food. The life of one cockroach depends on whether there is food and food for it. At home, they live longer and multiply more actively if they have access to food and water.
Human homes reliably shelter from their external influences. They are not affected by temperature effects and birds and snakes do not hunt. Possessing high adaptive properties, cockroaches move to houses.
The life of a cockroach can range from four months to four years. In the adult stage, they spend most of their lives. Larvae grow rapidly, large individuals appear in about 1.5 months.
The development of the larva can slow down in the egg if the living conditions of the cockroaches are poor. In good ones, on the contrary, they develop very quickly. Very soon, new adults will be ready to mate and breed quickly.
Cockroaches cannot live long without food and water. Stamina depends on the type: redheads stay without food and water for up to 30 days; black kitchen - up to 70.
Without food, large cockroaches begin to devour those smaller ones, as well as bite people. For example, they can bite the skin around nails or lips. Cockroaches survive so high that they can survive even without a head: they will breathe through the openings on the body. They adapt to many poisons in literally several generations.
Not only your apartment, but the entire floor will be infected. It is also useless to fight them with simple means: they will simply run across from place to place. Processing the apartment by specialists is the best choice of struggle.
Propagation of red domestic cockroaches
In many respects, the effectiveness of pest control depends on whether cockroaches reproduce when choosing a method and means.The high fecundity of these insects makes most attempts to lime them futile. Very quickly, they reappear, forcing the owners to look for other methods of struggle.
The more comfortable a person’s dwelling became, the more it attracted cockroaches. With the advent of steam heating, there was no need to look for a warm place in winter. Condensation on the water pipes completely provides insects with water, and the presence of a chute in the apartment building is a guarantee that cockroaches will not die of hunger.
Everyone heard the expression - breed like cockroaches, it most accurately describes how they reproduce. This process provides an increase in the number of colonies exponentially. The method of breeding cockroaches allows them to produce numerous offspring.
Males differ from females in size. They are smaller, they have more developed wings, which are used for planning when falling from a height. Cockroaches reproduce sexually. The suborder to which they belong is represented by great species diversity.
If we are talking about those insects that unauthorized to settle in our homes, then they have some features that allow you to accurately determine whether the female is in front of you or the male.
The wings of the females are also not adapted for flying even at short distances. They use them only to attract males. Inviting an individual of the opposite sex to mate, the female invitingly flaps its wings.
The behavior of the female and male
After fertilization occurs, the female lays her eggs in a special compartment - the odeca, from which the larvae then hatch. But the process itself is preceded by a long courtship.
For the favor of the female cockroaches engage in battles. Males literally win their right to reproduce offspring. Here, wings come in handy for them, they wave their eerie wings and at the same time make sounds that should frighten the opponent.
The moment of the female’s readiness for mating, that is, for reproduction, is determined by cockroaches by the smell, which is secreted by special glands. Mating lasts only a few minutes. The conditions in which home cockroaches live depend on how quickly they breed.
In the wild, this process slows down, in the absence of food and water, the colony of domestic insects does not grow so rapidly. But if the apartment is warm, there is access to water, and food is always available, then residents can tell a lot about how cockroaches breed, because they are in a state of permanent struggle with them.
Cockroaches breed fast, they are insects with an incomplete type of transformation. Their life cycle consists of the following stages:
- Egg;
- Larva;
- Adult
Before the larva becomes an adult (adult), it changes its cover several times. During her life, a female cockroach makes several clutches, on average, four to five. It is clear that their number depends on how often the apartment is processed, and how much the individual is resistant to poisons.
What is ooteka and what do eggs look like
Often people are interested in how many cockroaches hatch from one egg. The question has not been posed too correctly, since quite viable larvae come to light, and what many call an egg is actually an ooteca - a kind of storehouse for eggs.
It turns out that the eggs of cockroaches can be seen only if you specifically open or crush the odeca, in which there are several dozen, and only one cockroach will appear from one egg.
But these subtleties do not remove the main question - the number of individuals that one female produces at a time. In rare cases, they can be up to fifty, but usually 20-30 eggs are found in the ooteka and, accordingly, the same number of cockroach larvae hatch.
It would seem that not so much, but if you add up the entire litter from all pregnant females, you get a terrifying figure. Simple arithmetic - from only 5 females at a time, at least 100 cockroaches will appear.
What determines the rate of reproduction
Even if by some miracle you exterminate all the males, the surviving females will be able to bear offspring. This is possible due to the fact that the gametes (cellular elements) of the male are still stored in their body for a long time.
The capsule for eggs is divided so that future cockroaches lie tightly in rows. The eggs are very small. Their size does not exceed 1 mm. If you look inside the ooteca, you can see that they are translucent, and when enlarged, embryos are easily visible.
When the time comes for the female to lay eggs, an adhesive secretion begins to be produced in her abdomen. He envelops each egg and towards the end of the masonry a capsule emerges from the body, tightly “sealed” at both ends.
The rate of egg maturation depends on the indoor microclimate. The warmer and wetter, the faster the larvae will appear. The most comfortable temperature for the development of cockroach eggs is from + 30 ° C.
When bullying cockroaches, special attention should be paid to the ooteca. After the female dies from the poison, the eggs continue to develop, and if you leave the capsules, larvae hatch from them. Many people are familiar with the situation when, before leaving, they are treated with the most effective insecticide, and upon returning home, the owners see the corpses of adults and an army of living little Prussians.
At the scheduled time, larvae appear from the ootek, and the colony resumes its stay in the apartment. This leads to the conclusion that cockroaches must be poisoned under control and this must be done several times so that the poison acts on the larvae hatching from the eggs.
Differences in breeding black and red
In our apartments, the red-haired Prussians are mostly scooped up. They almost crowded out blacks, and the way of their reproduction plays an important role in this. The fact is that the female red cockroach until the last moment wears an odeca under the abdomen.
In case of danger, she takes her offspring to where he is not threatened with destruction. Thus, the Prussians have more chances of survival than black cockroaches.
The female black cockroach is not so caring. After the ooteka is formed, she wears it for several more days, and then discards it, leaving it to the mercy of fate. If you're lucky, larvae hatch from it.
For the rest of the term, the eggs of the black cockroach are in danger of destruction. In the two months allotted for the maturation of eggs, anything can happen.
Most often, they become prey for ants, and red cockroaches can eat them. From here comes the assertion that where the ants live, there are no cockroaches. This is true only for black cockroaches. The neighborhood of ants does not interfere with the red-haired Prussians.
Features of reproduction and the life cycle of cockroaches
If an uninvited guest, in the form of an insect, is wound up in your house, then most likely it is a cockroach, since it likes to be with a person next door.This insect looks like this: an elongated body, a long mustache, two bulging eyes, and wings folded on its back. Domestic cockroaches have a reddish color, to dark brown.
For many people, cockroaches cause great squeamishness, but in order to fight them, it is important to know how they breed, what offspring can be expected from them, as well as their life cycle. This will help you choose the most effective way to deal with them.
But cockroaches have a peculiarity, their development can stop at the stage of a larva or nymph, which can live 1.5 months and turn into an adult, and even several years, just increasing in size.
It all depends on the habitat. If it turns out to be good, then there will be several times more cockroaches in your house.
Development features
Cockroaches are insects that have an incomplete development cycle. Therefore, the stages of appearance and further development can be divided into several stages:
- Egg laying. At this stage, a sexually mature female lays eggs in a special abdominal sac in the oteku, in which there is glue connecting the eggs to each other. Ooteka is almost always with the female, until the egg has fully matured, it can be observed with the naked eye. The number of future cockroaches can reach up to 40 pieces;
- The development or maturation of eggs to the larval stage is from a couple of weeks to one month. The optimum temperature for ripening eggs is +30 degrees. If the temperature is lower, then ripening is slower;
- After the full maturation of the egg, the female throws back the abdominal sac, from where the larvae begin to hatch. Insect larvae are called nymphs. The nymph has no wings, and she may be slightly darker than her mother. This is a distinguishing feature between the larvae and the adult;
- After two months of good nutrition and good environmental factors for habitation, a nymph can turn into an adult female or male. During this period, the nymph can throw off up to six chitinous skins.
Ooteka is a unique way of laying eggs. It is different in size, depending on the number of eggs contained in it, different in color. The walls of the capsule are very dense, they can even resemble eggshells.
After complete maturation of the larvae, the ooteca bursts and small cockroaches emerge from it. Which go through the next stage. For some time, the young growth is located and lives on the belly of the mother, and then after they start to feed themselves, they scatter.
Life cycle
Before starting the fight, it is important to know how many insects live, and whether they can be without food for a long time. If a cockroach lives in an apartment, then its life expectancy depends on access to water and food. In order to survive in extreme conditions, and these are birds, snakes, they settle in a person’s dwelling. Each cockroach can live from 4 months to 4 years.
The entire life cycle can be represented in three main stages:
- oviposition in the ooteca;
- hatching larvae;
- emergence of an adult cockroach, after several larvae of larvae.
After the appearance of the larva, it begins its rapid development until the emergence of an adult insect, which is ready for mating. Only development in the womb or edema can be slow if the conditions are unfavorable. Sometimes the female can drop the capsule, but this happens before the larvae can hatch.
A red cockroach can live without food and liquid for 1 month, and a black one for 2 months.
If the cockroach has nothing to eat, then he can devour his own kind, but those that are smaller. There are times when cockroaches bite off their relatives heads. In this state, they can be for some time, since their survivability is very high. Continue to move and breathe through the holes that are on the sides of the body.
Sometimes, in search of food, pests attack a person, biting them and sucking blood. The Prussians very quickly adapt to the poison, if during the destruction of their poisons some of the parasites die, then after some period of time the rest will no longer respond to the poison.
All these features make populations of baleen insects rapidly growing and surviving. If you find yourself in one Prusak, then there will be others.
You need to find out in which apartment a nursery and contact the special sanitary services for etching. Moreover, insect poisoning is needed on the entire floor. And as a rule, cockroach raids are prone to multi-storey and apartment buildings.
How to breed
Before mating, the female begins her dance first. She spreads her wings and shakes them, after which the males take off low and also begin to shake their wings. Their flight suggests that each of the males offers to choose themselves.
After selecting the male, the cockroaches mate, and the female lays eggs in the capsule. During its short life, the female can lay eggs 4 or 5 times in the ooteca. After which she dies. She does not have to mate with a male every time. Egg laying can be carried out arbitrarily, since male gametes remained in her body, which are enough for complete fertilization.
If one cockroach is found, it is necessary to immediately begin the fight, so as not to miss the moment when the family grows to a myriad of numbers.
How to distinguish a female from a male
The sex of the insect is determined by several basic features:
- In size. Males are smaller than females;
- On the wings. In males, the wings are larger and the development with which they can fly;
- The male has a plate, which is located at the end of the trunk, the female has no such genital plate.
In conclusion, I want to note that the cockroach lives almost exclusively in the kitchen. It is often necessary to look behind a gas stove, a refrigerator, that is, everything that stands tight against the wall. Their favorite place is there, and that is where kids live.
Therefore, before you begin to poison insects, you need to move all adjacent objects to the floor and walls to prevent the kids from becoming an adult cockroach. Otherwise, the population begins to spread throughout the apartment building.
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