234 SMITHSONIAN MISCFXLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I4I 



Family DERMESTIDAE 

 Dermestes ater De Geer 



Common name. — Black larder beetle. 



Natural prey. — Blatta orientalis, U.S.A. (Roth and Willis, unpub- 

 lished data, 1953) : Dermestes ater is generally a scavenger, but vs^e 

 have seen adult beetles, which had developed in our cockroach colony, 

 clinging to and feeding on living oriental cockroaches, eventually kill- 

 ing them ; the beetles probably attack only the v^^eakened or injured 

 cockroaches in a culture. This was a natural infestation of a labora- 

 tory culture by a predator. 



Experimental prey. — Blattella germanica, oothecae, U.S.A. (Roth 

 and Willis, 1950) : The beetle larvae can penetrate unhatched oothecae 

 of the German but not those of the American or oriental cockroaches. 



Dermestes sp. 



Natural prey. — Blatta orientalis, oothecae, U.S.A., Missouri : Rau 

 (1924) stated that Dermestes larvae often infest the tgg cases of this 

 cockroach; it is probable that Rau was referring to cockroaches in 

 laboratory cultures. 



Order STREPSIPTERA 



Pierce (1909) predicted that the Blattoidea and the Grylloidea 

 would be the only groups of the Orthoptera which would be parasitized 

 by Strepsiptera. Essig (1926) made the statement that certain cock- 

 roaches are among the hosts of Strepsiptera. E. F. Riek (personal 

 communication, 1952) found a strepsipteron in a late nymph of 

 Cutilia sp. from Waroona, Western Australia ; he wrote us, "The 

 female parasite is extruded between a pair of sternites towards the 

 base of the abdomen and appears to belong to the family Halicto- 

 phagidae." This is the only record that we have been able to find of a 

 strepsipteron parasitizing cockroaches. 



Order HYMENOPTERA 



PREDATORS AND PARASITES OF COCKROACH EGGS 



Wasps from at least six families of Hymenoptera have been re- 

 corded as developing on cockroach eggs. All the Evaniidae are pre- 

 sumed to be parasitic in the egg capsules of cockroaches (Clausen, 

 1940; Townes, 1951), although hosts for many of the described 

 species have yet to be discovered. The presence of evaniids in dwell- 

 ings indicates the presence of cockroaches (Gross, 1950). At times 



