First Cockroach Paper: Startle Habituation in Orange Head Cockroaches

[varnon]

Hi all,

I do research in animal behavior. I just finalized my first publication with cockroaches and wanted to share. See: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/12/4/339 The article is open access, so its free for everyone. To give a simple summary, we studied the tendency of orange head cockroaches (my fav so far) to startle when lights are turned on or turned off. We call it the light-startle response (LSR). I'm really interested in how animals learned, so we used the LSR to study basic habitation learning. That is, the more you present a light-change stimulus, the less they respond to it. We went through four experiments with them investigating how they learn, and how it compares to other species. I think the abstract is pretty clear if you want more information, but I'm also happy to chat about it. The orange heads worked out really well for this project, and another one I am trying to publish soon, so I'll be continuing to do research with them. I got into them for practical research purposes, but I really do enjoy having them.