[8] Adult males are a brownish orange or red, are slender, and have long, yellowish wings which allow it to attract females and to glide.

[10] Of occasional indoor interlopers, males are more commonly encountered than females, due to their ability to fly and an attraction to lights.

[9] In Arabia, it lives beneath stones in damp hollows, desert farms, and wadis, feeding primarily at night.

[12][13] [14] The Turkestan cockroach was first noticed in the US in 1978, around the former Sharpe Army Depot in California, followed shortly after by appearances at Fort Bliss in Texas and several other military bases.

[7][15] “They typically inhabit in-ground containers such as water meter, irrigation, and electrical boxes, raises of concrete, cracks and crevices, and hollow block walls.”[7] They are well established in the Southwest and parts of the Southeast, and have been reported in the Northeast.

[17] Turkestan cockroaches are a popular choice of species, and are readily available for sale over the Internet, which may hasten their spread to new habitats.