Bananas
Cockroaches have been captured in bunches of bananas, in bracts of banana flowers, under banana leaves, and burrowing in rotten banana stalks. Although many of the species associated with bananas are indigenous to the banana-growing areas of the American Tropics, most of the specimens cited below were captured elsewhere as adventitious insects that had been imported with the fruit. It is obvious that many of these insects must have been closely associated with bananas on the plantations, where, undoubtedly, the growing plants provided attractive ecological niches. Bunting (1956) deduced, from the presence of healthy cockroaches on bananas allegedly sprayed with copper arsenate, that the insects did not feed on stems or fruit but hid among the bananas and foraged elsewhere; however, certain reports are of cockroaches actually feeding on bananas. Some of the records cited by Hebard (1917) were compiled from earlier reports not all of which we have seen. Numbers in parentheses following certain citations indicate the number of times the association had been observed. Known or suspected adventive material is so indicated.
Aglaopteryx diaphana, Jamaica (Rehn and Hebard, 1927): Found in bracts of banana blossoms. England (Bunting, 1955): Adventive, on bananas from Dominica.
Aglaopteryx vegeta, Finland (Princis, 1947): Adventive, in banana box.
Amazonina emarginata, Trinidad (Princis and Kevan, 1955): In banana bunch.
Archimandrita marmorata, Denmark (Henriksen, 1939): Adventive (2), in bananas from Jamaica(?). As Princis (1947) and Gurney (personal communication, 1959) point out, this is a Central American species, so Jamaica may be an error.
Archimandrita tessellate, Sweden (Princis, 1947): Adventive, from Honduras.
Blaberus atropos(?), Denmark (Henriksen, 1939): Adventive, from Jamaica. Princis (1947) pointed out that this species was more likely to have been Blaberus craniifer or Blaberus discoidalis, which are West Indian species, than B. atropos which is a South American species.
Blaberus boliviensis, Ecuador (Princis, 1952): In a shipment of bananas from near Puna.