The Cockroach covers the structure and physiology of the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana. This well-known insect is extensively used by research workers for insecticide testing and general experimental work. This book is composed of 12 chapters, and begins with a presentation of the classification, life history and development, and the external features of the American cockroach. These topics are followed by considerable chapters on the internal features of the insect, including its circulatory, nervous, reproductive, and muscular systems, sense organs, and excretion. A chapter presents some practical guidelines in the laboratory for observation, dissection, and drawing. The last chapter describes the parasites and predators of the American cockroach. Zoologists, entomologists, researchers, and entomology students will find this book rewarding.

This volume deals mainly with the biology of the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana (1.). Contributors were urged to emphasize recent findings, including unpublished data when possible, a goal that would not have been feasible if it were not for the two previously published books on the basic biology of cockroaches, The Biology o/the Cockroach (1968) by D. M. Guthrie and A. R. Tindall and The Cockroach, Volume 1 (1968) by P. B. Cornwell. Those topics not included in The American Cockroach, such as external morphology, are well covered in the two preceding books. In addition, these books provided a broad background upon which contributors to The American Cockroach have been able to build with recent trends, new and established concepts and integration. Although this book deals primarily with the American cockroach, many chapters offer a comparative approach in sections where the more recent and exciting research has been accomplished on other species. Most contributors place the cockroach in perspective with regard to its appropriateness or inappropriateness for various types of biological investigations. Many questions are realistically left unanswered when no acceptable or obvious solution is apparent; an invitation to new researchers to consider the cockroach as an experimental subject.