PSYCHE 
Vol. 69 
December, 1962 
No. 4 
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF 
OOCYTE DEVELOPMENT IN FALSE 
OVOVIVIPAROUS COCKROACHES* 
By Louis M. Roth and Barbara Stay 1 
Pioneering Research Laboratories 
Quartermaster Research and Engineering Center 
Natick, Massachusetts 
Recently Engelmann (i960) compared various internal and exter- 
nal factors which affect the activity of the corpora allata in Leuco- 
phaea maderae (Fabricius) and Diplotera punctata (Eschscholtz) . In 
these two species the stimuli resulting from mating, food intake, gesta- 
tion, and parturition differed in the degree to which they influenced 
production of gonadotropic hormone. 
In this paper we report our experiments on control of oocyte devel- 
opment in several species of cockroaches that incubate their eggs 
internally in a brood sac or uterus. We classify these species as false 
ovoviviparous forms because the uterine eggs increase in water content 
only (Roth and Willis, 1955) as opposed to false viviparous species, 
like Diploptera, in which the embryos take up both water and solids 
from the mother (Roth and Willis, 1955a). In both groups the 
oviposition behavior is similar. The eggs do not pass directly from the 
ovaries into the uterus but are first extruded to the outside of the body 
and then retracted into the brood sac (Roth and Willis, 1954, 1958). 
Cockroaches that incubate their eggs internally have two birth 
products, the egg and nymph (Roth and Willis, 1958). Ovulation 
and oviposition refer to the eggs being released from the ovaries, 
oriented by the ovipositor, and covered by the ootheca. After the 
eggs are in the uterus the females are pregnant (gestation) for a 
certain period of time and give birth (parturition) to nymphs. 
MATERIALS AND METHODS 
Except for one series of experiments on Nauphoeta (see page 174), 
all insects were reared on dog chow checkers and maintained at 24 0 
* Manuscript received by the editor August 1, 1962. 
Tresent address: Department of Zoology, University of Pennsylvania, 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
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