New Cockroaches (Dictyoptera: Blattodea) from French Guiana and a Revised Checklist for the Region.

Although French Guiana is one of the greatest hotspots of cockroach biodiversity on Earth, there are still undocumented species. From both newly collected and museum specimens, we provide species descriptions for Buboblatta vlasaki sp. nov., Lamproblatta antoni sp. nov., and Euhypnorna bifuscina sp. nov. and report new geographic records for species in the genera Epilampra Burmeister, Euphyllodromia Shelford, Ischnoptera Burmeister, and Euhypnorna Hebard. Finally, we update the checklist of species known from the region to 163 total species records from French Guiana, making it the second greatest hotspot of known cockroach biodiversity on Earth.

Pollination efficiency of cockroaches and other floral visitors of Clusia blattophila.

Cockroaches have rarely been documented as pollinators. In this paper we examine whether this is because they might be inefficient at pollination compared to other pollinators. Clusia blattophila, a dioecious shrub growing on isolated rocky outcrops in French Guiana, is pollinated by Amazonina platystylata cockroaches and provides a valuable system for the study of cockroach pollination efficiency. We examined the species composition of the visitor guild and visitation rates by means of camcorder recordings and visitor sampling. Then, we investigated the capacity for pollen transfer of principal visitors and found correlations between visitation rates and pollen loads on stigmas. In an exclusion experiment we determined the contributions of individual species to pollination success. Amazonina platystylata, crickets and two species of Diptera transferred pollen, but the number of transferred pollen grains was only related to visitation rates in the case of cockroaches. Crickets visited and rarely carried pollen. Dipterans were as frequent as cockroaches, carried similar pollen loads, but transferred much less pollen. An estimated 41% and 17% of ovules were pollinated by cockroaches and dipterans, respectively. The remaining ovules were not pollinated. There was no spatial variation in pollinator guild composition, but cockroaches visited flowers less frequently at the smaller study site. We demonstrate that cockroaches pollinate a large proportion of ovules. Their pollination service is not confined to one study site and, unlike that provided by dipterans, is not limited to certain years. We suggest that cockroach pollination has been overlooked and that cockroach-pollinated plants, which share certain floral features, possess adaptations to pollination by cockroaches.