When you first find out the pests are invading your home, it can be stressful. There are a lot of places you can have pests entering your abode. No matter how clean your home is, pests can still get inside. This article will go over some of the ways you can use pest control to get rid of pests.
Don't wait for a pest control problem to become an infestation; call a professional or take action on your own immediately. You might think that just because you've only seen one or two or that you don't see them often there isn't a big problem. Do something fast or you can expect big problems later.
Keep your kitchen as clean as possible. Bugs won't show up as often if they don't have anything to eat. In particular, use containers that have lids for loose food items in your pantry. Take the trash out often and keep your counters clean. Finally, sweep each evening before bed.
If you decide to use pesticide, keep in mind that these harmful chemicals could hurt your pets. If possible, have someone take care of your pets until you get rid of your pest problem. Make sure the food you give to your pets does not come in contact with the pesticides.
You can prevent most pest infestations by keeping your home clean. Do not leave any food scrapes on your table or in the kitchen sink and make sure you tightly seal garbage bags. Get rid of your garbage on a regular basis and do not hesitate to store garbage bags in your garage until you can get rid of them.
Do not tackle pest control alone if you live in a multiunit structure. Your individual efforts might be successful temporarily, but ineffective in the long run. Insects could just travel to another condo, apartment or townhome and then return. Consult with the property managers or other owners for a building-wide treatment solution.
If you've got crevices and cracks in your house, seal them off right way. These can often function as entry points for lots of pests. The best fix for this is to seal these entrances off so they can not re-enter.
If nothing you are doing is working, call a professional. There are trained professionals that you can use to help get rid of the bugs that are in your house already or prevent new ones from entering your home in the future. This could be the best investment that you ever make for your home.
When trying to avoid having pests in your house, realize that your yard is just as important to upkeep. Don't let trash sit around outside and make sure that there's no puddles or stagnant water collecting anywhere. Furthermore, keep your grass trimmed and the weeds to a minimal. You don't want your yard to be a pest playhouse.
Make sure that your kitchen does not have grease problems. Grease is a regular dietary staple of ants, roaches and a number of small flies. Drain flies actually breed in grease pans. So, eliminate all visible grease areas. However, also deal with invisible grease underneath stoves and your countertops.
You can take matters into your own hands when it comes to pest control. Although certain situations may necessitate a call to your local pest control company, you can handle many common issues simply by following the tips included in the article above. Keep this piece as a handy reference, and pull it out whenever you need to refer to it.
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In a Cannibalistic Society, It’s Not About Survival—It’s All About Recycling
In this spooky time of year, there are many examples we could draw from insects to give the heebie-jeebies to non-entomophiles. We could talk about mosquitoes, the most dangerous animals on the planet, or ticks, which vector a variety of diseases, but these are not so much spooky as they are dangerous, seeing their dramatic impact on human health worldwide. Let’s keep this post on the light-hearted side, please.
Zombie Insects
So, spooky bugs. Let’s start with zombie ants. It’s a classic dive into zombie culture while exploring the amazing biology of a host-manipulating fungal parasite. Next in line would be parasitoid wasps, as their gruesome life cycle rips through the host’s organs from the inside while keeping it alive the entire time. Another favorite: the Nicrophorus burying beetles lay their eggs on a decomposing carcass and display extensive parental behavior to their growing larvae as they chew through the putrid flesh of the roadkill. Gruesome, yet full of love. It’s the pinnacle of cute. Halloween could definitely use insects as core material for “horrific†displays in our front yards (with all the classic anatomic fails of course, but this is another horror story). By the way, I was very disappointed when nothing came up from a “parasitoid wasp Halloween display†Google search (someone should do something about this, please).
Termite Cannibals
Another spooky example, often forgotten, is cannibalistic insect societies. I bring your attention to termites. Termites have evolved away from their Cryptocercus-like wood roach ancestor and reached the highest level of social organization while exploiting woody material. The evolution of their biology was therefore constrained by a significant dietary restriction: wood is carbon-rich but notably nitrogen-poor. Termites have therefore perfected a recycling strategy toward nitrogen conservation over evolutionary time: cannibalism.
It also has been suggested that cannibalism could have an essential role in helping a group of termites survive a period of starvation. Workers would cannibalize their nutritionally-dependent nestmates to alleviate their trophic burden. This strategy would therefore reduce the metabolic footprint of a starving group of termites to increase their chance of survival, Ã la Soylent Green.
However, all previous studies on this topic subjected small groups of termites to starvation. In a recent study, I revisited this concept, but instead subjected full termite colonies to starvation. To make a long story short: termites are terrible in their survival strategy during starvation events because, in fact, they don’t really have a strategy.
Unlike honeybees that store months-worth of honey, termites have a carpe-diem approach to food safety, as they have no internal reserves. Instead, subterranean termites such as Coptotermes gestroi will relentlessly forage for new food sites to prevent food shortage in the first place. But if starvation of the termite colony actually occurs, give it about 30 days.
As the metabolism of the colony progressively ran out of fuel, nutritionally-stressed individuals started accumulating in the colony. Unfortunately for termite larvae and workers, who are hemimetabolous insects stuck in a permanent juvenile molting cycle, the time to molt eventually comes, and the younger the instar, the faster the molting cycle. Have you ever tried molting while completely starving? I would not advise it. These termites failed in their attempt to molt, leading to their death and subsequent cannibalism from nestmates.
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