The Specific Richness of Forest Cockroach Communities in The Region of Aflou (Laghouat; Algeria)

Abstract

Forest cockroaches are among the insects that play an important and effective role in forest formations, they are insects with incomplete metamorphosis belonging to the order of Blattodea. This work is a contribution to the knowledge of Blattoptera species existing in the forest environments of Aflou’s region (Laghouat; Algeria).The inventory was carried out monthly in the El-Khnegue Forest (Aflou) from February 2019 to May 2019. It revealed the presence of six species of forest Cockroaches, which belongs to 4 genera of the Blattelidae family. After identification, it was demonstrated that, these species were: Dziriblatta nigriventris (Chopard, 1936), Dziriblatta stenoptera (Chopard, 1937), Loboptera ovolobata (Bohn, 1991), Loboptera decipiens (Germar, 1817), Phyllodromica zebra (Rhen, 1903) and Ectobius sp. (Stephens, 1835). Our results showed also that the soil and the thin layers of litter provide favorable habitat for the development of different species. The litters are composed mainly of leaves, which give very high organic carbon content with little humidity.

Keywords

• blattodea
• cockroaches
• forest
• inventory