There is a general perception that cockroaches are somehow "unkillable" and will survive extinction events better than other organisms. As such, information about cockroach extinction is relevant to people's perception of how bad the current state of anthropogenic extinction is. While population level data on cockroaches are almost entirely lacking, there is good data on habitat loss. To tie habitat loss to extinction rates we need to model endemism patterns. How many species are unique to areas that have been destroyed? I estimate endemism, total species richness, and number of extinct cockroach species for the whole Amazon basin. While estimates do not converge, we find that extinction due to habitat loss is likely on the order of hundreds of species, with some estimates upwards of 10,000 species already extinct. The most conservative estimate suggests that there are ~4X more Amazonian cockroach species than are currently described.
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