Cockroaches interact with night‐blooming flowers in the Caatinga dry forest

Although rarely documented among angiosperms, cockroach pollination is perhaps more widespread than currently known. In northeastern Brazil's Caatinga--the largest seasonally dry tropical forest in the Neotropics--within Catimbau National Park, we observed the cockroach Eurycotis manni (Blattidae) interacting with the flowers of two plants endemic to this dry forest: the bromeliad Dyckia spectabilis [formerly Encholirium spectabile] and the palm Syagrus coronata. E manni is the first Blattidae cockroach to be recorded visiting flowers (other cases involve cockroach species from the Ectobiidae [formerly Blattellidae] and Blaberidae). While D spectabilis belongs to the Bromeliaceae, a family that includes species documented as cockroach-pollinated, S coronata belongs to the Arecaceae, for which no members are known to be cockroach-pollinated.