Inside a quiet laboratory at the University of the Philippines – Los Baños (UPLB), entomologist Cristian Lucanas studies an insect most people would rather crush than examine. The 31-year-old researcher has built an unusual reputation around the creature, earning the nickname “Ipis Lord”, after the Filipino word for cockroach.
Lucanas is the Philippines’ only scientist known to specialize in cockroach taxonomy and has discovered 15 species so far. His fascination with the insect is unusual in a country where cockroaches are more often associated with filth than science.
“I also hated cockroaches when I was a child,” he told AFP with a grin during an interview in Los Baños, Laguna. “Fear of cockroaches is innate,” he said, adding that when people ask what he does, he often simplifies his answer: “I work in a museum.”
Globally, more than 4,600 cockroach species have been identified, though Lucanas believes the real number could be far higher. “It’s possible the real total is double or even triple that,” he said, noting that the insects have long been overlooked by researchers.
In the Philippines—one of the world’s most biodiverse archipelagos—about 130 species have been recorded, roughly three-quarters of them found nowhere else.
Lucanas suspects that at least 200 more local species remain undocumented. “For the longest time, no one was studying them,” he told AFP, describing the lack of research as “sad” given their diversity and ecological importance.
His interest in cockroaches began 12 years ago during a field trip to a bat cave on a remote Philippine island. The cave floor was crawling with cockroaches feeding on bat guano. When his biology adviser could not identify the species, Lucanas realized he might have stumbled upon a scientific niche few others had explored.
Since then, he has spent years trekking through forests, caves, and mountains documenting species across the archipelago. A fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucanas often draws inspiration from the author’s fantasy universe when naming his discoveries, creating scientific names such as “Valar”, “Hobbitoblatta” and “Nazgul”, references to creatures from The Lord of the Rings.
Despite their reputation, cockroaches play a crucial ecological role. “Because of their outsized role in the ecosystem, its processes would be hampered if they disappear,” Lucanas said. Like dung beetles and earthworms, they are detritivores that feed on decaying organic material—including dead plants, animals, and even other cockroaches—helping recycle nutrients back into the soil.
Their disappearance would ripple through ecosystems, he said. Birds and spiders would lose a key food source, decomposition would slow, and plants would absorb less carbon dioxide.
Still, even Lucanas draws a line between research subjects and household pests. At the museum where he works, which houses about 250,000 preserved insect specimens, he keeps a can of insect spray within reach in case live cockroaches threaten the collection.
His unusual expertise occasionally attracts requests from outside academia. A large pest-control company once invited him to lecture its staff on cockroach identification, while a restaurant chain sought his advice after invasive German cockroaches began raiding its commissary.
“Control is not really my forte,” Lucanas told AFP.
He also dismisses one of the insect’s most persistent myths—that cockroaches would survive a nuclear apocalypse. Their resistance to radiation, he explained, is roughly similar to that of other insects.
A more immediate threat, he said, is human activity. Some cave-dwelling cockroach species first recorded in the Philippines in the 1890s during the Spanish colonial period have not been seen again since tourism opened their habitats to visitors.
Species living in mountain ecosystems may also be vulnerable because they reproduce slowly and depend on fragile environments that are increasingly threatened by development.
Lucanas worries that limited research funding in the Philippines often prioritizes studies with direct benefits for humans, leaving basic biodiversity work under-supported. For now, his goal is simply to document and understand as many species as possible before they disappear.
“I think I’ll stick with what I’m doing. It’s how I’ve built my reputation,” he said. “And I really do enjoy working with cockroaches.”
Lucanas earned his bachelor’s degree in biology, majoring in ecology, from UPLB before completing a Master of Science in Forestry specializing in forest biological science at the same institution. Since 2014 he has documented insect diversity across the Philippines, describing several cockroach genera and species from the country and collaborating on discoveries in India and Indonesia.
Beyond cockroaches, his research has also examined other insect groups including springtails, webspinners, true bugs, beetles, and wasps. He is a member of the National Research Council of the Philippines, the Philippine Association of Entomologists, the Association of Systematic Biologists of the Philippines, and the Biology Teachers Association of the Philippines.
Stay updated—follow Philippines Today on Facebook and Instagram, and subscribe on YouTube for more stories.