I am sort of interested in why wildtype males have shorter wings than wildtype females… Could u tell me why???
Wild type male cockroaches, in general, do not have shorter wings than females in proportion to their bodies. In general cockroach females are more robust than males to allow for producing and carrying their large clutches of eggs. Thus the females tend to be larger, for example in my illustration of Blaberus giganteus, AND THE FEMALE’S WINGS ARE THUS LARGER THAN THE MALE WINGS IN AN ABSOLUTE SENSE ONLY. Some of this larger size is because females undergo more molts to get to the adult stage. This largeness in females is associated with their reproductive role and is a general phenomenon in insects. There is another phenomenon called brachyptery (short wingedness) which is associated with some cockroach species as a sexual dimorphism. The females of some species have strongly reduced wings which are useless for the gliding type of flight that cockroaches do. (Actually, one domicilary cockroach, the Kuchenschabe, Blatta orientalis, is a non-wildtype species that exhibits the female brac
