A netizen’s rare sighting of the Thyrsocera nymph at the Thompson Nature Park

A netizen appears to have spotted a rare Thyrsocera nymph at the Thompson Nature Park last Feb 27, 2022, about 10 am. Janice Ang, a member of the Facebook group Singapore (SG) Insect ID and Records shared the photo.

One of the netizens, Farhan Rashid expressed his disbelief of the Thyrsocera nymph, “found in Singapore?? Seen forest roaches before but never this!”

Other netizens expressed their awe, and surprise for the Thyrsocera nymph, and congratulated Ms Ang for a good find. Ms Ang gave credit to Cristian Caballes Lucanas, for identifying the species of the Thyrsocera nymph.

In 2018, the Singapore Biodiversity Records by the National University of Singapore, Emmanuel Goh, and Fao Maosheng explained the rarity of the Thyrsocera nymph. They stated that apart from the entomology collection of the National History Museum there are not many records of these forest-dwelling nymphs.

“There is a similar specimen of this cockroach in the entomology collection of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at the National University of Singapore that was collected from the Nee Soon swamp-forest in April 2005. Murphy (1973: 57) mentions a ‘Thyrsocera sp.’ found in the dead log at the Bukit Timah forest, but we do not know if his insect is conspecific with the featured example. Apart from these, there appears to be no other record of this genus of (presumably) forest-dwelling cockroaches in Singapore.”

In another rare wildlife sighting, John Lee the founder of Wildlife Singapore shared with us a sighting of a critically endangered and rare leopard cat in Singapore. /TISG

Sightings of a critically endangered and rare leopard cat in Singapore