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Cryptocercus is a genus of Dictyoptera (cockroaches and allies) and the sole member of its own family Cryptocercidae.Beccaloni, G. & P. Eggleton. (2013). Order Blattodea. In: Zhang, Z.-Q.(Ed.) Animal Biodiversity: An Outline of Higher-level Classification and Survey of Taxonomic Richness (Addenda 2013). Zootaxa 3703(1) 46-48. Species are known as wood roaches or brown-hooded cockroaches. These roaches are subsocial, their young requiring considerable parental interaction. They also share wood-digesting gut bacteria types with wood-eating termites, and are therefore seen as evidence of a close genetic relationship, that termites are essentially evolved from social cockroaches.Daegan Inward, George Beccaloni, and Paul Eggleton (2007) Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches
Cryptocercus is especially notable for sharing numerous characteristics with termites, and phylogenetic studies have shown this genus is more closely related to termites than it is to other cockroaches.Djernæs, M., et al. 2012. Phylogeny of cockroaches (Insecta, Dictyoptera, Blattodea), with placement of aberrant taxa and exploration of out-group sampling. Systematic Entomology 37(1): 65–83. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3113.2011.00598.x. These two lineages probably shared a common ancestor in the early Cretaceous.
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