Pests cause ruin for millions of homeowners every year. If you live in any kind of home, you are one day going to have to deal with some kind of pest. The important thing to remember is that you can handle it. Here are some smart ways for you to handle pests.
One of the ways that you can reduce the amount of centipedes and bugs in your house is to get a dehumidifier. This device will help to take the moisture out of the air, which is an environment that bugs love to go to. This will help to curtail your bug problem in the summer.
One of the ways that you can prevent mosquitoes from coming to your house is to eliminate the standing water that you have outdoors. This can be anything from a puddle to a kiddy pool, as you will want to drain all the water in these, especially in the summer.
If you are apprehensive about using chemical pest control in your home, try traps instead. Physical traps work to attract the pest and then trap it. Some work like traditional mouse traps that snap closed and kill the pest, while others involve a sticky sheet that adheres the pest to the sheet so you can remove it from your home.
Check to see if your windows or screens are cracked or ripped as insects can easily penetrate any inconsistencies in your infrastructure. If you see that a seal has been broken, make sure that you fix this or get it replaced immediately so that it does not become an issue in the future.
Avoid using pesticides that you can purchase in a grocery store. These are usually extremely potent to humans, but do little to get rid of the pest problem. They also require a lot of preparation and clean-up. If you choose to use chemicals to rid your home of pests you will likely find more success using a professional.
Your water system needs to be free of leaks. All pests need a water source to survive. They are able to detect drips and leaks from a long way off. Do not let this be the cause of the pest infestation. A little maintenance can go a long way in preventing pests.
Clean any highly trafficked food areas every single day. Even a few crumbs each day can lead to a feast for pests over time. It's best then to approach your cleaning not once a week, but daily for these areas. Even just five minutes will lead you to a cleaner area and less potential pests.
Have ants? Use lemons. Ants dislike the scent of lemons. Therefore, start using lemon-scented products, or actual lemons, to get rid of them. Try pouring lemon-scented oil along the perimeters of the rooms in your home. Use lemon-scented products to wipe up in the kitchen. You will soon notice that ants avoid you.
Are you ready to take action? It's time to go to war! See, this can be fun, and it's time to take back your home on your own two feet. It's nice taking care of things yourself, and pest control will now be something that you have accomplished on your own.
Additional Reading - Read What Other Things We Found
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.
Navigate Here https://entomologytoday.org/2019/10/31/in-a-cannibalistic-society-its-not-about-survival-its-all-about-recycling/
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