Entomologists at the University of Florida scoured the literature to come up with a list of insects that were the coolest, fastest, largest, longest, loudest and brightest. They also chose more unusual champions: best imitator, least specific vertebrate bloodsucker and most spectacular mating just to name a few of them. Wired Science put together a list of 40 of their favorites, all which have their own allure to them: Earth’s Most Extreme Insects.
Posts Tagged ‘Alabama Pest Control’
Earth’s Most Extreme Insects
Friday, November 2nd, 2012
Clemson Extension agent identifies new invasive pest in South Carolina
Friday, October 12th, 2012A new invasive pest has been identified in South Carolina. “A homeowner brought it into the Lexington Extension office from West Columbia. I knew it was a tortoise beetle; it was just a matter of finding out what kind it was,” said Vicky Bertagnolli. “Eucalyptus typically doesn’t have that many pests, so it was pretty easy to find.” To read more click on the link below.
Clemson Extension agent identifies new invasive pest in South Carolina
Survey
Friday, October 5th, 2012
Six Facts You Didn’t Know About Bed Bugs
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012Six Facts You Didn’t Know About Bed Bugs
If you follow the news and have seen all the attention bed bugs have received in the past few years, you might think you know all there is to know about this pest: They feed on humans while they sleep, they cause itchy, red bumps and they are hard to get rid of! But these pesky insects have a lot of secrets that you might be surprised to learn.
1. Bed bugs can live anywhere.
When most people think of bed bugs, they think of hotels. But the truth is, bed bugs can thrive in single-family homes, apartments, hospitals, college dorm rooms, office buildings, schools, buses, trains, movie theaters, retail stores and just about anywhere that humans are. In fact, according to the “Bugs without Borders” study, 89 percent of pest professionals report treating bed bug infestations in single-family homes, and 88 percent report treating bed bug infestations in apartments/condos. Respondents also report other common areas, with 67 percent treating bed bug infestations in hotels/motels, 35 percent in college dormitories, 9 percent on various modes of transportation, 5 percent in laundry facilities, and 4 percent in movie theatres.
2. Bed bugs aren’t just city dwellers.
Contrary to popular belief, bed bugs are not just in big cities or third-world countries. They are found in all 50 states. The “Bugs without Borders” survey found that 17 percent of pest control professionals report treating bed bugs in the Northeast; 20 percent in the Midwest; 20 percent in the South; and 19 percent in the West. However, the incidence of bed bugs is three times higher in urban areas than in rural areas due to factors such as larger population size, apartment living and increased mobility, which are conducive to the rapid spread and breeding of bed bugs.
3. Bed bugs are hardy.
These pests can live for several months without a blood meal. This means they can linger in furniture, bags and suitcases for a long time until they are near a human host again. In addition, bed bugs can survive temperatures of nearly freezing to 122 degrees. Because of this, bed bugs are not a pest that can be treated with DIY measures. Professional pest control is the most effective way to treat an infestation.
4. Bed bugs are smart.
As a survival instinct, bed bugs are elusive. They know to stay out of view during the daytime, hiding in mattress crevices, box springs, baseboards, behind electrical switchplates, in picture frames, and even behind wallpaper. But at nighttime, the carbon dioxide we exhale drawls them out of their hiding spots.
5. Bed bugs are methodical.
Bed bugs have a predictable feeding pattern. Once a bed bug finds a host, it will usually feed three times, for 5 to 10 minutes each time. These three meals are often jokingly referred to as breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the three bite marks they leave behind – usually right in a row and on exposed skin on the chest, arms or legs – are telltale signs of a bed bug infestation.
6. Bed bugs could have a degree in anesthesiology.
People often wonder why a biting bed bug doesn’t wake up its human host when it feeds. The answer is that bed bugs feed by inserting two hollow, beak-like feeding tubes into their host. The first tube injects the bug’s saliva, which contains anesthetics to numb the feeding area. The second tube draws blood. After feeding, they move to secluded places and hide for 5-10 days. During this time, they do not feed but instead digest their meal, mate and lay eggs.
If you have a bed bug infestation, don’t try to treat it alone. Instead, contact a licensed pest professional who is trained on the (unique, often sneaky) habits of bed bugs. They will be able to inspect your home and recommend an effective course of treatment.
Fire Ants Use Ancient Jungle Survival Skills to Ride Out Recent Rains
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012AL.com: Fire Ants Use Ancient Jungle Survival Skills to Ride Out Recent Rains
A scene out of the Brazilian rainforest played out in a Fairhope puddle as fire ants native to the Amazonian jungle relied on an ancient trick to survive early June’s deluge.
After their nest was submerged under several inches of water in a park, the ants managed to create a floating raft composed only of their bodies. Chained together in a network of interlocking legs, bodies and mandibles, the entire colony drifted around on the surface of the puddle.
Crawling atop the writhing mass, worker ants could be seen carrying white larvae and the slightly more developed pupae of their young, rescued from the nursery areas of the sunken colony. Giant soldier ants, perhaps three times larger than the workers, marched back and forth across the top of the living vessel like sea captains surveying the horizon. And every now and then, the queen would emerge from the center of the mass, surrounded by thousands of her minions.
Scientists studying fire ants in their native Brazil have spent years puzzling over the ability of enormous colonies there to form floating lifeboats several feet across. In the frequently inundated bottomlands surrounding the Amazon, the ants have been known to float for months at a time. The mystery lies in the fact that ants are heavier than water, and a lone ant quickly sinks. How then do thousands of ants manage to stay afloat?
Working in the Hu Biolocomotion Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, David Hu and his fellow researchers solved the mystery. Locking together “tarsus to tarsus,” Hu wrote in a scientific paper published in 2011, the network of ant bodies and legs forms a sort of waterproof fabric.
“The ants are basically a waterproof surface the world hasn’t seen before … it is a great mechanism to deal with a deluge, one that took millions of years to evolve,” Hu said in a Tuesday interview. “It is the same principle that Gore-tex works on. It’s highly porous fabric that has lots of air pockets. The water has to do a lot of work to penetrate the fabric.”
To study the ant rafts, Hu froze the ants with liquid nitrogen and analyzed how they were joined together under an electron microscope. Tiny hairs all over the legs of the ants served to make the living waterproof fabric they created even tighter. In addition to keeping water out, those hairs and ant bodies worked to trap tiny air bubbles beneath each ant.
Those bubbles joined together beneath the raft, increasing its buoyancy, and ensuring that none of the ants die, even those buried on the bottom of the raft. Hu filmed the ants forming the rafts and filmed a scientist pushing down on top of a raft with forceps. Incredibly, the forceps were able to push a portion of the raft more than an inch underwater without it breaking apart, and without leaking. A bubble of air can be seen surrounding the ants in the video.
“Our intuition of water doesn’t hold at small scales. Water acts like a trampoline on the scale of ants,” Hu said. “The ants are surprisingly elastic. They can build these membranes that are quite strong. The water doesn’t penetrate the ants, which boggles our expectations.”
Hu said the research is applicable in the cutting edge field of modular robotics.
“Robots of the future will have a big bucket of parts. You dump them out and assemble a machine” purpose-built for the job at hand, Hu said.
“Ants are like that. There are millions of parts. They can assemble into something, like a raft, or a bridge, and do it without central control.”
Hu’s research lies at the nexus of engineering and biology. For a time, his focus was on insects that walk on water, such as water striders. A device constructed in his lab out of a 7-Up can and elastic from a tube sock can walk on water. Called the Robo Strider, it weighs less than a postage stamp.
“I’m interested in the biology, but also what animals can do to show us how this kind of behavior is possible,” Hu said. “Clearly we can build machines that outperform nature in some respects – airplanes and cars, for instance – but other challenges, things like linking together and cooperating, we don’t have a clue how to build a machine that can do those things.”
Entomological Society of America: Bug-Bomb Foggers are No Match for Bed Bugs
Monday, June 11th, 2012Entomological Society of America: Bug-Bomb Foggers are No Match for Bed Bugs
Consumer products known as “bug bombs” or “foggers” have been sold for decades for use against many common household insects. However, recent research published in the Journal of Economic Entomology (JEE) shows these products to be ineffective against bed bugs.
In “Ineffectiveness of Over-the-Counter Total-Release Foggers Against the Bed Bug (Heteroptera: Cimicidae),” an article appearing in the June issue of JEE, authors Susan C. Jones and Joshua L. Bryant provide the first scientific evidence that these products should not be recommended for control of this increasingly worrisome urban pest.
“There has always been this perception and feedback from the pest-management industry that over-the-counter foggers are not effective against bed bugs and might make matters worse,” said Susan Jones, an urban entomologist with the university’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and a household and structural pest specialist with OSU Extension. “But up until now there has been no published data regarding the efficacy of foggers against bedbugs.”
Jones and research associate Joshua Bryant evaluated three different fogger brands obtained from a nationwide retailer, and experiments were conducted on five different bedbug populations. Following application of the three foggers, Jones and Bryant found little, if any, adverse effects on the bed bugs.
Because a majority of bed bugs spend most of the time hiding in protected sites (under sheets and mattresses, in cracks and crevices, deep inside carpets, etc.), Jones said it is very unlikely that they will be exposed to the insecticide mist from foggers. And even if they do come into contact with the mist, she added, many bed bug populations have varying degrees of resistance to the insecticides, so they will most likely survive the application.
“These foggers don’t penetrate in cracks and crevices where most bed bugs are hiding, so most of them will survive,” Jones said. “If you use these products, you will not get the infestation under control, you will waste your money, and you will delay effective treatment of your infestation. Bed bugs are among the most difficult and expensive urban pests to control. It typically takes a professional to do it right. Also, the ineffective use of these products can lead to further resistance in insects.”
Members of the media who would like access to the JEE article should write to pubs@entsoc.org.
The Journal of Economic Entomology is published by the Entomological Society of America, the largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines. Founded in 1889, ESA today has more than 6,000 members affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. For more information, visit http://www.entsoc.org.
Chronicle.Augusta.com: Kudzu Bugs Have a Very Dark Side
Monday, May 14th, 2012Chronicle.Augusta.com: Kudzu Bugs Have a Very Dark Side
We have some fairly new insects to contend with – kudzu bugs. I had the first one brought to my office from Wilkes County in 2010. They first showed up in 2009 in Georgia in a nine-county cluster that included Oglethorpe, Clark, Oconee, Jackson, Barrow, Hall, Gwinnett, Walton and DeKalb. The bugs have been spreading every year and now reach into South Carolina, North Carolina and southernmost Virginia. Going West, they have reached a few counties in Alabama. As far as I know, the only areas in Georgia that have not been infested are coastal and extreme south Georgia.
Kudzu bugs came from Asia; scientists think from Japan. They had never been seen in the western hemisphere until the fall 2009, when they showed up in these clusters of Georgia counties.
Kudzu bugs are about 1/6- to ¼-inch long, somewhat oblong in shape, and olive-green with brown speckles. They have a squared-off back end.
These insects get their name because kudzu is their favorite meal. Unfortunately, they don’t stop at kudzu. They will feed on a variety of legumes (soybeans and other bean species as well as wisteria and some vetches).
Not only are they causing a concern for plants, they are a nuisance because they like to come in our houses in the fall.
Kudzu bugs have several generations per year. In the spring, they feed extensively in kudzu patches and on other legume hosts. In July and August, they move into soybeans and feed on stems and foliage, having a significant impact on crop yields. The bugs continue to feed and lay eggs into the fall on kudzu and other hosts.
As the temperature and day length decline, kudzu bugs leave their soybean and kudzu hosts in search of protected sites where they will spend the winter. Overwintering sites are any crack or crevice where a group of bugs congregate. For example, this can be, but is not limited to, the gaps under the bark of trees or under the siding of a home. They seem to like high places as well, such as the edges of homes (fascia boards, gutters). During each of the past three years, this fall flight began around mid-October and did not subside until late November or early December.
When bugs find their way in your home, vacuum them up and make sure you seal all cracks and crevices and make sure window screens are repaired and door sweeps are installed. When bugs congregated on your house, spray them directly with a pyrethroid insecticide. Do not spray indoors.
For any plants in the garden such as peas or beans, any number of insecticides such as carbaryl (Sevin), bifenthrin (Ortho Max Bug-B-Gon), spinosad, or esfenvalerate can be used as kudzu bugs are easily killed. Unfortunately, new kudzu bugs will quickly re-infest plants.
Kudzu bugs have reduced kudzu growth in Georgia by 30-50 percent. The bad news is they are having an impact on Georgia soybean production by reducing yield around 20 percent. There also does not appear to be very many native natural enemies of kudzu bugs. As a result scientists have searched for and identified a parasitoid in Japan. Plans are to import this wasp for biological control purposes. The wasp parasitizes kudzu bug eggs, thus ending their life cycle.
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ABCNews.com: Busy Tick Season Expected Thanks to Mild Winter and Early Spring
Friday, April 13th, 2012ABCNews.com: Busy Tick Season Expected Thanks to Mild Winter and Early Spring
This year’s unusually mild winter and the early onset of warm temperatures comes with a nasty downside — an explosion of ticks just waiting for a fresh, warm-blood meal.
“It’s going to be a really bad season, and it’s been almost the perfect storm,” said David Roth, co-chairman of the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance, a newly formed group of organizations that promote advocacy and awareness of Lyme disease and other conditions caused by ticks. “Part of it is the warmth and the fact that normally, they’re just coming out at this time of year, but they’ve been out now for a while, and so have people.”
There are a number of species of ticks, but perhaps the most well known is the deer tick, which carries the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
Roth, now 45, became intimately acquainted with Lyme disease in 2010, when he started to experience a variety of what he called “mysterious” symptoms.
For months, doctors couldn’t diagnose him, since Lyme disease can affect multiple body systems, and symptoms often mimic those of other diseases. He didn’t develop the telltale round, red rash that most people recognize as a hallmark of the disease. Many people don’t get that rash.
“Different people can be impacted differently,” Roth said. “My symptoms were more neurological.” He had difficulty sleeping and breathing, and experienced night sweats, tremors and more. Those symptoms, he said, still affect him two years later.
According to the American Lyme Disease Foundation, the signs of Lyme disease can vary but often include the red rash that may appear about one or two weeks after a tick bite around the site of the bite, fever, joint pain, fatigue and chills. As the bacteria continue to invade the body, people may experience a stiff neck, tingling and severe headaches.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 2010, about 22,000 cases of Lyme disease and 8,000 more probable cases were reported nationwide.
While Lyme disease is the most common tickborne disease, ticks can also transmit diseases such as babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia.
There has been a lot of debate over certain aspects of Lyme disease, including diagnosis and treatment. Another controversial point has been whether chronic Lyme disease exists. Despite the debate, there is agreement over the need to prevent tickborne diseases. Ticks often carry more than one disease, so people may end up getting co-infections from a single bite.
“We anticipate that this is going to be a very buggy summer, and infectious disease doctors are prepared to see an increase in people with tick-related illnesses,” said Dr. William Schaffner, director of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
No matter what species of tick is involved, preventive measures will be the same.
“Use tick repellent containing Deet, and use it regularly — that includes mowing lawns or working around the house, not just going on a hike in the woods,” Schaffner said.
People should also check each other and themselves after being outside. They should carefully inspect the back, hair, groin and other areas.
“If you can remove a tick promptly, it reduces the risk of infection,” he said. “It takes a while for a tick to feed and regurgiate the disease-causing organism into the body.”
When removing ticks from themselves or pets, people should grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull back without jerking.
Also, Schaffner said people should see a health care provider if they have been out in wooded areas and are experiencing an illness characterized by fever, and be sure to let the provider know they were outdoors, since ticks could bite and fall off without a person ever knowing.
Roth knows from experience how debilitating Lyme disease can be, and emphasized that prevention — and early diagnosis — were critical.
“People don’t get diagnosed until it’s too late,” he said.
Commercial Pest Control Services
Friday, March 16th, 2012Prevention is critical in protecting your business from a pest infestation. Below are just a few ways that your business can avoid pest infestations and the potential health and property threats that pests and rodents can pose.
- “Pest-proof” your business by being vigilant of building maintenance needs
- Dispose of garbage regularly and store in sealed containers.
- Seal cracks and holes on the outside of your business, including entry points for utilities and pipes.
- Don’t overlook proper drainage at the foundation; install gutters or diverts, which will channel water away from the building.
- Be sure your employees keep food sealed and stored properly.
- Clean high-volume areas daily, such as public eating areas and kitchenettes, where crumbs and trash are more likely to build up.
- Call a local pest control professional to inspect for pests and rodents, identify the problem and control the pest(s) using an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach.
