Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 12, 2026

Cryptocercus

Cryptocercus is a genus of Dictyoptera and the sole member of its own family Cryptocercidae. Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches. These roaches are subsocial, their young requiring considerable parental interaction. They also share wood-digesting gut bacteria types with wood-eating termites, and are therefore seen as evidence of a close genetic relationship, that termites are essentially evolved from social cockroaches.

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Jun 12, 2026
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Cryptocercus - brown-hooded cockroaches
Cryptocercus clevelandi
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Clade: Pancrustacea
Class: Insecta
Order: Blattodea
Superfamily: Blattoidea
Epifamily: Cryptocercoidae
Family: Cryptocercidae
Handlirsch, 1925
Genus: Cryptocercus
Scudder, 1862
Species

See text

Cryptocercus is a genus of Dictyoptera (cockroaches and allies) and the sole member of its own family Cryptocercidae.1 Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches. These roaches are subsocial, their young requiring considerable parental interaction. They also share wood-digesting gut bacteria types with wood-eating termites, and are therefore seen as evidence of a close genetic relationship, that termites are essentially evolved from social cockroaches.2

Cryptocercus is especially notable for sharing numerous characteristics with termites, and phylogenetic studies have shown this genus is more closely related to termites than it is to other cockroaches.3 These two lineages probably shared a common ancestor in the early Cretaceous.4

Species

Found in North America and (especially temperate) Asia, there are 12 known species:

References

References

  1. Beccaloni, G. & P. Eggleton. (2013). Order Blattodea. In: Zhang, Z.-Q.(Ed.) Animal Biodiversity: An Outline of Higher-level Classification and Survey of Taxonomic Richness (Addenda 2013). Zootaxa 3703(1) 46-48.
  2. Daegan Inward, George Beccaloni, and Paul Eggleton (2007) Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches
  3. Djernæs, M., et al. 2012. Phylogeny of cockroaches (Insecta, Dictyoptera, Blattodea), with placement of aberrant taxa and exploration of out-group sampling. Systematic Entomology 37(1): 65–83. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3113.2011.00598.x.
  4. Li, Xin-Ran (2022). "Phylogeny and age of cockroaches: a reanalysis of mitogenomes with selective fossil calibrations". Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift. 69 (1): 1–18. doi:10.3897/dez.69.68373. ISSN 1860-1324.
Further reading

Further reading