Gregarina blattarum von Siebold
Synonymy.—Gregarina blattae orientalis; Clepsidrina blattarum.
Natural hosts.—Blatta orientalis, Germany (Siebold, 1837, 1839; Stein, 1848; Bütschli, 1881; Wolters, 1891; Marshall, 1892; Wellmer, 1910, 1911; Foerster, 1938; Schubotz, 1905); U.S.A. (Leidy, 1853a; Crawley, 1903; Watson, 1917; Kudo, 1922; McAdow, 1931; Sprague, 1940, 1941); England (Lankester, 1863); France (Schneider, 1875; Cuénot, 1901; Laveran and Franchini, 1920a); Brazil (Magalhães, 1900; Pinto, 1919); U.S.S.R. (Zasukhin, 1929, 1930).
Blattella germanica, U.S.A. (Crawley, 1903); South Africa (Fantham, 1929; Porter, 1930: these appear to be the same record).
Blattella germanica and/or Periplaneta americana, Egypt (DeCoursey and Otto, 1956, 1957).
Periplaneta americana, Brazil (Magalhães, 1900); U.S.A. (Crawley, 1903; 1907; McAdow, 1931); South Africa (Fantham, 1929; Porter, 1930: these appear to be the same record); Gold Coast Colony (Macfie, 1922).
Parcoblatta pensylvanica, U.S.A., Michigan (Ellis, 1913a).
Cockroaches, Germany (Schiffmann, 1919: probably used the oriental cockroach); Venezuela (Tejera, 1926).
Organism usually found in the intestinal tract of cockroaches where it is attached to the gut cells. Cysts are passed in the feces. Occasionally, G. blattarum (fig. 2, J) is found in the body cavity (Leidy, 1853a; Hall, 1907). Though this is considered to be one of the commonest of the Sporozoa encountered in cockroaches, DeCoursey and Otto (1956) found only 10 of 217 P. americana and B. germanica, collected in restaurants in Egypt, infested with this species. Watson (1917) found a dozen or more in one specimen of Blatta orientalis. Zasukhin (1929, 1930) found 2.6 percent of 3,000 oriental cockroaches infected with this parasite.