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Dear colleagues: My name is Daniel Patón and I am a professor of Ecology at the University of Extremadura (Spain). I teach two subjects Environmental Biotechnology and Experimental Techniques in Ecology. My specialization is the analysis of environmental data. I am interested in invertebrate composites such as isopods, worms, mealworms, soldier flies and of course cockroaches. We touch on these topics in my classes, but I have a lot to learn. I can bring knowledge of applied statistics and interdisciplinary training. 1. Do you currently raise any roaches? I currently care for three species of cockroaches: Eublaberus spp. "ivory", Aeluropoda insignis and Blaptica dubia. My main interest is the degradation of waste for composting. 2. If so, how many? I have several terrariums with hundreds of animals. I also have soldier flies (Hermetia illucens), mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) and two species of worms (Dendrobaena veneta and Eisenia fetida). I dedicate them to research and practical classes with my Environmental Biotechnology students. 3. Do you culture roaches as pets or feeders? I am mainly interested in degrading waste and generating compost 4. If feeders, what kinds? I'm interested in finding the species that degrades the most, doesn't require a lot of temperature, doesn't fly, is easy to handle and is not invasive. Some of these concepts are contradictory, but I'm still looking. So far Eublaberus and Aleuropoda are winning. 5. Are there any specific roach questions that you would like to ask the community? Yes, I would like to know which species would be suitable to set up a waste degradation centre in a place where the winter temperature does not usually go below 32 F (0ºC) zero degrees outside and reaches 113 F (45ºC) in summer. I suppose that in well-insulated buildings it would not be very expensive to heat. I am interested in the fact that the species is not invasive, although I understand that those that escape would die in winter. 6. How did you find our community? Asking experts like Kyle Kandilian, they told me about this excellent forum. It's not easy to find in searches, at least from Europe it didn't come up. I think it is a perfect forum, very well structured, clear and simple. Extremely useful Greetings **************************************************************************** Daniel Patón Numerical Ecology. Ecology Unit Department of Plant Biology, Ecology and Earth Sciences Faculty of Sciences. University of Extremadura Avda. Elvas s/n 06071 Badajoz (Spain) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2500-3964 https://cvn.fecyt.es/0000-0003-2500-3964 http://unex.academia.edu/DanielPatonDominguez https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_Paton/ http://sites.google.com/site/numericalecologyuex/home ****************************************************************************

I just noticed Kyle mentioned blatticomposting on his site. Which I think is awesome! Since I'm huge into giving all of my table scraps to my roaches and it works out beautifully. Was wondering who else is into blatticomposting. He posted this link as well with more information if your interested.