Dictyoptera (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

δίκτυον ''diktyon'' "net" and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing") is an insect

superorder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

that includes two extant

orders Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of ...

of polyneopterous insects: the order

Blattodea Blattodea is an order of insects that contains cockroaches and termites. Formerly, termites were considered a separate order, Isoptera, but genetic and molecular evidence suggests they evolved from within the cockroach lineage, cladistically m ...

(

termite Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes ( eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blat ...

s and

cockroach Cockroaches (or roaches) are a Paraphyly, paraphyletic group of insects belonging to Blattodea, containing all members of the group except termites. About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are we ...

es together) and the order

Mantodea Mantises are an Order (biology), order (Mantodea) of insects that contains List of mantis genera and species, over 2,400 species in about 460 genera in 33 families. The largest family is the Mantidae ("mantids"). Mantises are distributed wor ...

(mantises). While all modern Dictyoptera have short

ovipositor The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects, for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typica ...

s, the oldest fossils of Dictyoptera have long ovipositors, much like members of the

Orthoptera Orthoptera () is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and wētā. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – grass ...

Classification and phylogeny

The use of the term Dictyoptera has changed over the years, and while largely out of use for much of the last century, it is becoming more widely used. It has usually been considered a superorder, with Isoptera, Blattodea and Mantodea being its three orders. In some classifications, however, Dictyoptera is shifted to order status and in others the order Isoptera has been subsumed under Blattodea while retaining Dictyoptera as a superorder. Regardless, in all classifications the constituent groups are the same, just treated at different rank. Termites and cockroaches are very closely related, with ecological and molecular data pointing to a relationship with the cockroach genus ''

Cryptocercus ''Cryptocercus'' is a genus of Dictyoptera (cockroaches and allies) and the sole member of its own family Cryptocercidae. Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches. These roaches are subsocial, their young requiring considera ...

''. According to genetic evidence, the closest living relatives of the Dictyoptera are the phasmids and the enigmatic order

Notoptera The wingless insect order Notoptera, a group first proposed in 1915, had been largely unrecognized since its original conception, until resurrected in 2004. As now defined, the order comprises five families, three of them known only from fossils ...

. If the Dictyoptera are considered a superorder these other orders might be included in it. Evolutionary relationships based on Eggleton, Beccaloni & Inward 2007 and modified by Evangelista et al. 2019, are shown in the

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

: The cockroach families Anaplectidae,

Lamproblattidae Lamproblattidae is a small family of South and Central American cockroaches in the order Blattodea Blattodea is an order of insects that contains cockroaches and termites. Formerly, termites were considered a separate order, Isoptera, but ge ...

, and Tryonicidae are not shown but are placed within the superfamily Blattoidea. The cockroach families

Corydiidae Corydiidae, previously known as Polyphagidae, is a family of the order Blattodea ( cockroaches). Many are known as sand cockroaches. The family is divided into five subfamilies, comprising some 40 genera. One prominent species is the desert cockr ...

and

Ectobiidae Ectobiidae (formerly Blattellidae) is a family of the order Blattodea (cockroaches). This family contains many of the smaller common household pest cockroaches, among others. They are sometimes called wood cockroaches. A few notable species inclu ...

were previously known as the Polyphagidae and Blattellidae. The cladogram also shows the family Alienopteridae (originally assigned to its own order "Alienoptera") as sister to Mantodea, but it was subsequently reassigned to the extinct

superfamily Umenocoleoidea by Vršanský ''et al.''. Oxyopsis sp

Classification and phylogeny

References

Further reading