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New Therea species could be coming to US hobby


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Based on the description of the species, it appears that wing shade is the only difference between species. Perhaps they are all the same species, and wing color is the equivalent of hair color in humans, and should not have been enough to warrant itself a different species in the first place. A genital dissection would be more reliable in determining if it should be classified as its own species. For being a science, taxonomy is highly subject to opinion.

Yeah, this all seems fishy, I think there may not even be a T.Bernhardti. Guess we all have T.petiveriana then. And on top of everything, it looks like we are not gaining a new Therea species. Bummer. :(

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Just as a heads up to you all, I've been doing some following up with whoever had mentioned it to me and they don't really even know where they heard it from. So either someone is holding the species extremely close to the vest to try to not let anyone know, or it's some random rumor someone made up that just started making the rounds. All things considered (especially since the people that told me aren't huge roach people but love Therea), I'd be willing to bet a whole lot of roaches it's the second.

Also Orin I have a male T. petiveriana that looks very much like yours. Lots and lots of white and not many spots. I'll try to get a pic posted later.

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Seems that there's a bit of confusion about the T. bernhardti and T. petiveriana so here's the description of the species.

http://freeforumzone...px?idd=10038747

According to the key, T. bernhardti has short "black" hind wings, and if I remember correctly I've seen a comment on facebook stating that petiveriana has yellow hind wings that are significantly longer than bernhardti.

What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid. The Therea sp. that Jorg had was believed to be true petiveriana, but apparently his culture died out before the ID was determined

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Seems that there's a bit of confusion about the T. bernhardti and T. petiveriana so here's the description of the species.

http://freeforumzone...px?idd=10038747

According to the key, T. bernhardti has short "black" hind wings, and if I remember correctly I've seen a comment on facebook stating that petiveriana has yellow hind wings that are significantly longer than bernhardti.

What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid. The Therea sp. that Jorg had was believed to be true petiveriana, but apparently his culture died out before the ID was determined

Yeah, I put a link to the description in an earlier post. :P Did you see Orin's post where he left a link to a supposed T.petiveriana from a museum that had black underwings?

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Ah...I didn't see that. Chances are the species was IDed before the bernhardti was described, which would explain for the black wings.

Hmm.. maybe. That is very possible.

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What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid.

There is no key and that description does not describe differences from T. petiveriana as is common for a normal new species description. It will be interesting to see how or if this problem is ever addressed.
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Hi guys,

I have both strains from Jorg in culture. An important thing to know is that both black AND yellow underwings were obviously mixed in his roaches. So, or both are from the same species, and it's just an inner species variation, or they can hybridize and in that case, botch of my colonies are just bullshit. By security, I've kept all black hindwings adults in a tank, and all yellow hindwings in an other one. I'm waiting for their babies to get adult so I'll know it has a chance to be two different species or not.

Originally, all those Therea were sold as Therea petiveriana. The strain was obviously ID by Fabian Deck in Belgium who compared them with other Therea in a museum. I personnaly know him, and last time I saw him we discussed about the possibility it was not petiveriana. Indeed, this species was the more close to what we have in captivity, but he didn't made any wings comparison or anything, he was very quick to ID them and confess he might be wrong, but there were no other Therea in stock that looked like this.

I had a very quick talk with Ingo Fritzsche (who described Therea bernhardti) when I met him last year and he clearly told me the other species, with yellow underwings, was maybe from the same species. No one knows at the moment, but we shouldn't be too enthusiastic about this "new species". If my colony occur to be 100% yellow hindwing, I'll send him some samples so he can confirm me if it's new or not.

Note: what we have in culture is Therea bernhardti, not petiveriana. True petiveriana has hindwings longer than berhardti. When the ID mistake was spotted, Ingo described the new species but the wrong name was already very popular in the hobby. The two strains, yellow and black hindwings, are very short winged. In both case, they are definitely not Therea petiveriana ;)

Best regards,

Nicolas

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Note: what we have in culture is Therea bernhardti, not petiveriana. True petiveriana has hindwings longer than berhardti.

However, the new description includes two different sized wings and wing length is something that varies within many species and is notoriously a poor indicator. If there is not a definitive specific feature a new description is invalid.
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  • 1 year later...

It's tempting to put their DNA on one of the sequencers here :) (I'm working as labspecialist and bioinformatician in a human genetics lab)... 

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4 hours ago, stanislas said:

It's tempting to put their DNA on one of the sequencers here :) (I'm working as labspecialist and bioinformatician in a human genetics lab)... 

That'd be great, keep us updated on that, would probably clear things up a bit as to the whole bernhardti/petiveriana debate!! :)

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On 4/27/2017 at 11:27 AM, Nicolas Rousseaux said:

A few news:
I visited the Paris Museum's collection and compared T. petiveriana (from the museum) to my T. berhardti. Sizes are VERY different, no exception. T. petiveriana is way smaller than what we keep!

Just how much smaller? What sex was it? Is it possible that T.petiveriana was just a runt?

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1 hour ago, talace said:

Hi I am new to this but why don't they just DNA subjects to determine what they are?

Yeah, I really think someone should just go ahead and do that already. 

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6 hours ago, Nicolas Rousseaux said:

I'd say they were about the size of Therea regularis. Both sex were smaller. There were several specimens, all were about the same size :)

Hmm, well that's not that much smaller really, but the fact that they were all that size... So we either have a giant morph of T.petiveriana, or T.bernhardti. Thanks for the info Nicolas, really appreciate it! :)

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