Optional thelkytokous parthenogenesis occurs in several cockroach species when females are isolated from males, including in the common domestic pests "Blatta orientalis", "Blattella germanica", and "Periplaneta americana", but in "P. surinamensis" it is obligatory parthenogenesis, its sole means of reproduction. Earlier taxonomy treated P. surinamensis as a species with both sexual and asexual forms, reproducing asexually in some populations, but sexually in other populations. Roth in 1967 applied the name "P. indicus" (Fabricius, 1775) to the sexually-reproducing taxon from which the parthenogenetic form "P. surinamensis" is descended. While "P. surinamensis" is cosmopolitan, "P. indicus" is endemic to the Indomalayasian region and adjacent parts of Southeast Asia, and spread just to Hawaiian and Mauritian islands.