Blattabacterium

Blattabacterium
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Bacteria
Phylum:	Bacteroidetes
Class:	Flavobacteria
Order:	Flavobacteriales
Family:	Blattabacteriaceae
Genus:	Blattabacterium Hollande & Favre, 1931
Species
B. cuenoti (Mercier, 1906) B. relictus Clark & Kambhampati, 2003 B. clevelandi Clark & Kambhampati, 2003 B. punctulatus Clark & Kambhampati, 2003

Blattabacterium is a genus of obligate mutualistic endosymbiont bacteria that are believed to inhabit all species of cockroach studied to date, with the exception of the genus Nocticola.^[1] The genus' presence in the termite Mastotermes darwiniensis led to speculation, later confirmed, that termites and cockroaches are evolutionarily linked.^[2][3] B. cuenoti was traditionally considered the only species in the genus Blattabacterium,^[4] which is in turn the only genus in the family Blattabacteriaceae;^[5] however, three new species have been described hosted by different species of Cryptocercus (cockroach): Blattabacterium relictus in Cryptocercus relictus, B. clevelandi in C. clevelandi and B. punctulatus in C. darwini, C. garciai, C. punctulatus and C. wrighti.

Further reading

• Sabree, Z. L.; Kambhampati, S.; Moran, N. A. (30 October 2009). "Nitrogen recycling and nutritional provisioning by Blattabacterium, the cockroach endosymbiont". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (46): 19521–19526. doi:10.1073/pnas.0907504106.

References

1. Nathan Lo, Tiziana Beninati, Fred Stone, James Walker & Luciano Sacchi (2007). "Cockroaches that lack Blattabacterium endosymbionts: the phylogenetically divergent genus Nocticola". Biology Letters 3 (3): 327–330. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0614. PMC 2464682. PMID 17376757.
2. Wendy Zuckerman, The roach's secret, New Scientist, 16 April 2011
3. Nathan Lo & Paul Eggleton, Termite Phylogenetics and Co-cladogenesis with Symbionts, Bignell, D., Roisin ,Y., & Lo, N., ed (2011), Biology of Termites: A Modern Synthesis: 27-50, doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3977-4-2
4. Jeffrey W. Clark & Srinivas Kambhampati (2003). "Phylogenetic analysis of Blattabacterium, endosymbiotic bacteria from the wood roach, Cryptocercus (Blattodea: Cryptocercidae), including a description of three new species". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 26 (1): 82–88. doi:10.1016/S1055-7903(02)00330-5. PMID 12470940.
5. D. R. Boone & R. W. Castenholz, ed. (2001). Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. Volume 1. The Archaea and the deeply branching and phototrophic Bacteria (2nd ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 465–466. ISBN 978-0-387-98771-2.