Tropical Flat Rove Beetle vs Boll's Wood Cockroach

Side-by-side species comparison

Attribute Tropical Flat Rove Beetle Boll's Wood Cockroach
Scientific Name Priochirus abyssinus Parcoblatta bolliana
Order Coleoptera Blattodea
Family Staphylinidae Ectobiidae
Size 8-12 mm 12-16 mm
Habitat Mountains Woodlands
Diet Wood Feeders Wood Feeders
Regions East Africa, Ethiopian Highlands Texas and the south-central United States
Conservation Least Concern Not Evaluated

Tropical Flat Rove Beetle

A highly flattened, tropical rove beetle with a remarkably compressed body adapted for living under tree bark. Its pancake-like profile allows it to exploit extremely thin subcortical spaces.

💡

Did You Know?

The body of this beetle is so flat that it can squeeze into bark crevices less than 1 mm wide, making it virtually unreachable by predators.

Boll's Wood Cockroach

A small native wood cockroach from the south-central United States. It lives under bark and in rotting logs in wooded areas.

💡

Did You Know?

It was named after the naturalist Jacob Boll, a Swiss-American who collected insects in Texas in the 1870s.