Someone is sending me 15 Blattidae sp. "African Bullet" roaches so that I can formally ID them and publish the species description in a scientific paper. This species has been commonly misidentified as Bantua robusta.
The roaches originate from a domestic colony. Apparently the founding individuals were collected from a log at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, but that was the only information he could provide me. There was no mention of when the wild roaches were collected, exactly where on the mountain, if any new individuals were added to the colony after the initial collection, etc.
Would this limited information be acceptable for describing this species?
Hi. Yes, it is preferable to know exact place of the specimen collection, in your case possibly with GPS data, dates of collection etc. This will influence a lot on the quality of you paper and the impact factor of the journal, where you will be able to publish it. I recommend you to retrieve from pubmed or other database some similar articles and have a look at them. You will have a better idea what you need after that. Feel free contacting me.
The description of a new species does not entirely depend on having precise distribution data. There are many described taxa that lack such data. This is much better than having erroneous data, for example, some S American butterflies were described from "East Indies" and so on.
Regarding publication in a decent journal, some referees will object unless there is precise GPS data, but others will accept it even on the amount of data you presented above, about the log at the base of Kilimanjaro...that clarifies that it is a low elevation roach, that it is a forest insect and that it is a local creature.
No harm writing the paper and offering it to a journal of your choice, then seeing what the referees suggest?
Thanks for the answers everyone. I am going to proceed with writing the paper anyways, since I haven't been able to find anyone reliable who'd be willing to go out and collect them for me from the wild. Let's hope that it works out!
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