Endamoeba blattae (Bütschli)
Synonymy.—Amoeba blattae, Entamoeba blattae, Entamoeba blattarum.
Natural hosts.—Blatta orientalis, Germany (Bütschli, 1878; Schubotz, 1905; Chen, 1933); U.S.A. (Leidy, 1879a, 1880; Kudo, 1922, 1925a, 1926a; Kirby, 1927; McAdow, 1931; Meglitsch, 1938, 1940); France (Mercier, 1907a, 1908, 1909, 1910); Europe? (Janicki, 1908, 1909); U.S.S.R. (Yakimov and Miller, 1922; Zasukhin, 1929, 1930); England (Thomson and Lucas, 1926; Lucas, 1927, 1927a, 1928); Yugoslavia (Ivanić, 1926a).
Blattella germanica and/or Periplaneta americana, South Africa (Porter, 1930); Egypt (DeCoursey and Otto, 1956, 1957): Seven out of 217 cockroaches examined harbored the protozoan.
Periplaneta americana, Philippine Islands (Hegner and Chu, 1930); U.S.A. (Morris, 1936; Armer, 1944); Gold Coast Colony (Macfie, 1922).
Periplaneta australasiae, U.S.A. (Morris, 1936).
Cockroaches, Paraguay? (Elmassian, 1909); Austria (Bělǎr, 1916); U.S.A. (Morris, 1935, 1936; Balch, 1932); Venezuela (Tejera, 1926).
The habitat of E. blattae (fig. 2, C) is the hind intestine and rectum of the cockroach. The incidence of infection varies: Kudo (1925a) found in 1,255 oriental cockroaches infections in 5 percent in March and 50 percent in the summer; Schubotz (1905) found 5 to 20 percent of the examined cockroaches to be infested; Yakimov and Miller (1922) found 4 percent of 124 oriental cockroaches infested; Zasukhin (1930) found up to 50 percent of over 3,000 B. orientalis infested; Meglitsch (1938, 1940) found almost 100 percent infection in B. orientalis kept in a crowded culture for several weeks. Chen (1933) developed two synthetic media in which E. blattae could be grown for 45 to 50 days.
Mercier (1907a) observed a fungus, Nucleophaga sp., hyperparasitic in the nucleus of Endamoeba blattae.