Cockroaches are known to carry human pathogens and can potentially transmit diseases to people. Additionally Cockroaches are a source of allergens and can cause allergic reactions and asthma in people especially children. Therea petiveriana is commonly known as seven spotted cockroach belongs to a basal family Polyphagidae of cockroaches and was reported from peninsular India. The morpho based phenotype is the product of the interaction between genes and environment. Genetic diversity can be analyzed by various techniques like RAPD, RFLP, Protein fingerprinting etc. For molecular analysis the cockroach species Therea petiveriana were collected from twelve different localities of southern parts of Tamil Nadu, India of leaf litters by adapting hand picking methods. About twelve populations of T.petiveriana were collected from different localities of Tamilnadu from the rice field and were subjected to RAPD analysis using twenty random decameric primers. Out of the twenty RAPD primers tested, three primers have produced clear, consistent and reproducible RAPD bands for all the populations. UPGMA based dendrogram analysis grouped all the populations of T.petiveriana into many clusters based on the genetic similarity coefficient.
