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Cockroaches can team up. A South American species is the first cockroach known to live in group nests with workers and a queen, like honeybees or leaf-cutter ants.

鈥淎ll cockroaches are solitary,鈥� says Peter Vr拧ansk媒 at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava 鈥� or so everyone thought. 鈥淚t鈥檚 unbelievable. It鈥檚 like discovering ants as a group.鈥�

Some animals, such as honeybees, are eusocial: not only do they live in large groups and work together to tend the young, but most individuals don鈥檛 themselves reproduce. Worker bees are sterile, for instance, and only the queen lays eggs.

Vr拧ansk媒鈥檚 and his colleagues spent 20 years looking for living specimens of the cockroach Melyroidea magnifica, which has barely been seen since it was identified in cloud forests around the Rio Bigal nature reserve in Ecuador in 1912. Local conservationist Thierry Garcia at the Sumac Muyu Foundation in Ecuador finally found a nest in 2017.

The cockroaches nested in bamboo or hardwood trees in groups of several hundred. They spend a lot of time inside the nests, which explains why they were so hard to find. 鈥淭here was one week where not one cockroach was outside,鈥� says Vr拧ansk媒.

The adult cockroaches had bright red heads and green abdomens. There were also tiny black larvae.

The team found one individual that was 1.25 times larger than the others and had white wings. They have tentatively identified this as the queen, although Vr拧ansk媒 says they need more evidence to be sure. 鈥淲e would need to prove that it is the only individual which lays eggs,鈥� he says. But in two months of observations, they never saw the other cockroaches laying eggs, which suggests they are sterile workers.

The finding highlights how little is known about cockroach behaviour, says Vr拧ansk媒. 鈥淲e know nearly nothing.鈥�

Cockroaches have existed since before the time of the dinosaurs. They belong to the same group as termites, many species of which are eusocial, and Vr拧ansk媒 says some dinosaur-era cockroaches must have been eusocial. However, M. magnifica only evolved eusociality after the dinosaur extinction.

The team has also described two new cockroach species, Melyroidea ecuadoriana and Aclavoidea socialis, from the same area. Both also live in groups, but it isn鈥檛 clear if they have workers and queens.

鈥淭his place appears to be a hotspot,鈥� says Vr拧ansk媒. The team has found 200 cockroach species living in a less than 2-square-kilometre area. 鈥淚t鈥檚 comparable to all Europe or all United States.鈥� Garcia鈥檚 organisation has bought much of the cloud forest in order to protect it.