Author: Marnie Holloway

Preventing pests by removing their food, water, or shelter is one way to control them. This includes storing food in sealed containers and removing garbage regularly.

Sealing cracks and holes is another important step to prevent pests from entering your home. This is especially helpful for scavenging pests like mice and rats, which can cause damage by chewing and gnawing. Contact Pest Control Boise now!

Insects are the most abundant animals on the planet, occupying every conceivable ecological niche and creating a complex biological foundation for terrestrial ecosystems. Insects decompose and cycle nutrients, disperse seeds, maintain soil structure and fertility, control populations of other organisms, including predators, parasitoids and disease vectors and provide a major food source for mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Insects also pollinate plants and can be beneficial in agricultural settings.

Pest control often is necessary for crops, garden areas and lawns. However, only a small percentage of insects cause damage. Most insects are natural part of a healthy ecosystem, acting as predators, parasites and pollinators. The loss of these species would have a devastating effect on the environment.

Many of the same factors that affect crop plants and their pests also affect insect population growth. Weather conditions, especially temperature and day length, affect insects’ activity and their capacity to reproduce. Rain, freezing temperatures, drought and wind can kill pests, suppress their growth or carry them away. Insects’ natural enemies can also control their numbers. Birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and some mammals prey on some insects, reducing their abundance. Other predators, such as parasitic wasps and flies, lay their eggs inside pest species, lowering their population levels.

The size of a pest depends on the species, its life cycle, and the habitat in which it lives. Some insects live in a solitary phase, increasing their numbers slowly over time, while others enter a gregarious phase and form enormous migratory swarms that can destroy crops. Desert locusts and European gypsy moths are examples of this type of pest.

Eradication of outdoor pests is a rare goal in most situations, primarily because of the difficulty and expense involved. In some cases, such as with Mediterranean fruit flies and fire ants, eradication programs are supported by governments. Eradication is a more common goal in indoor pest situations, where the environment is less complicated and it is easier to contain and eliminate pests.

Some chemicals are used to control insects. Pheromones, which mimic the signals that female insects use to attract males, can be used to lure pests into traps. Reproduction can be interfered with by introducing genetically modified strains of insects that lack certain hormones that control reproduction. Nematodes, tiny microscopic roundworms that live in the soil, can be used to reduce pest populations by killing them from the inside. The technique is labor intensive and nematodes do not last long, so they must be applied frequently.

Rodents

Rodents are warm-blooded mammals that can be found on every continent except Antarctica. They have oversized front teeth for gnawing and “check” teeth that are adapted for chewing, enabling them to consume a wide variety of items. Rodents are a nuisance and can cause significant damage to structures, crops, buildings, and personal property. They also carry and transmit diseases.

Rats and mice are often a source of anxiety for people who own pets because they may eat or contaminate pet food. They also may leave feces or carry fleas that can make pets sick. Generally, rodents are not aggressive, but they will bite when cornered or startled.

While some rodents are considered pests, others play important ecological roles in grasslands and forest by spreading seeds and spores, providing prey for predators and scavengers, and keeping vegetation from becoming overgrown. However, many species of rodents, such as the Norway rat, can be problematic when they take up residence in homes or businesses.

The public was more certain than expected that they would contact their local authority if they experienced rodent nuisance, and significantly more likely to expect that the service provided by the pest control sector should be humane. The public was also more certain than the sector predicted that everyday methods for preventing rodent nuisance (excluding them from houses, sealing cracks in walls, storing food in sealed containers and disposing of waste properly) should be used before resorting to lethal pesticides.

A professional pest control technician should visit the site of a rodent problem and take an integrated approach to solving it, using monitoring equipment to confirm entry points, determine the size of the infestation, and locate rat harbourage areas. The technician should then recommend a proofing strategy and decide whether traps or rodenticides are best. If traps are used, they should be designed to avoid re-infestation and set correctly to reduce the risk of rodent bait being taken by other animals, such as birds or snakes. If poison is used, it should be formulated to be non-toxic to children and pets.

Biological Control

Biological control is the use of natural organisms to manage pests. It can be used to control insects, weeds, rodents or diseases. Biological controls are less harmful to the environment than chemical pesticides because they do not leave behind toxic residues. They can also be used to control invasive species.

Using natural enemies to control pests is an integral part of integrated pest management (IPM) and organic farming systems. In this approach, natural predators and parasitoids are introduced to control pests that threaten the economic viability of crops. These natural enemies are carefully screened to ensure they will not have adverse effects on native plants or other non-target organisms. When suitable candidates are found, they are sent to the pest’s native habitat for study and, if promising, are shipped back to be introduced in an area where the target pest is abundant.

The goal of classical biological control is to establish a stable population of the potential enemy that reaches balance with the pest over a long period of time. This type of control is most successful with sedentary, or year-round-growing, pests such as the citrus budworm Icerya purchasi in Florida, and the gypsy moth and Mediterranean fruit fly in Europe. It is difficult to apply this approach to migratory or sporadic pests, or to situations where the population of the natural enemy may be disturbed by habitat manipulation or agricultural practices.

Another technique, augmentative biological control, is based on the same principles as classical biological control but is used primarily against exotic or invasive pests that have inadvertently been introduced into new areas. Natural enemies are collected from the country or region of origin of the pest, inoculated into an environment where they will be released, and allowed to build up a population large enough to suppress the target pest. Augmentative biological control is most often employed in greenhouses, nurseries and some fruit or vegetable fields, where a number of predators or parasitoids can be mass-reared in insectaries and then applied en masse to control pests.

Both classical and augmentative biocontrol approaches require extensive research into the biology of the target pest, the potential natural enemies, their behavior, ecology, and the environment in which they will be introduced and released. In addition, specific natural enemies are chosen to match the characteristics of the targeted pest. For example, a predatory mite, Amblysieus swirskii, feeds on thrips, whiteflies and broad mites, while a parasitoid, Phytoseiulus persimilis, attacks only spider mites.

Chemical Control

The pests that cause significant harm to crops in Napa County are usually arthropods. They are also a major threat to human and animal health by transmitting diseases, particularly in the case of mosquitoes and ticks. The economic loss of agricultural crops to insect pests runs into billions, and this is exacerbated by the constant emergence of new invasive pest species, widespread resistance to chemical pesticides, and geographical expansion of existing pests.

A wide range of biological, physical, cultural, and genetic methods can be used to control pests. Integrated pest management (IPM) involves the use of all these control methods in a coordinated manner, using a mix that is tailored to the particular pest situation, and that considers both short and long-term impacts on the ecosystem.

Chemical pesticides kill or repel pests by acting as nerve toxins, growth regulators/inhibitors, or pheromone disrupters. They can be organic or inorganic and may be broad-spectrum or narrow-spectrum. They can be delivered directly to the pest, or into the environment, for example through tillage and irrigation. In addition to being toxic to pests, they can also be toxic to non-target organisms such as the pest’s natural enemies, persist in the environment causing soil contamination, water quality and air quality problems, biomagnify in food chains, or have other adverse environmental effects.

The goal of pest control is to reduce the number of pests to a level below which their damage becomes unacceptable. There are often several pests present, and controlling all of them is usually not feasible. The goal of pest management is to achieve this threshold with a combination of control tactics that are economical, safe for the environment and human inhabitants, and do not have unacceptable side-effects on other species in the ecosystem.

Phytosanitary measures, including good sanitation, help to keep populations of harmful organisms below damaging levels. The judicious use of cultural and physical control methods can further depress pest populations. For example, hand-picking can be effective for some horticultural pests, especially those with brightly colored foliage, such as Colorado potato beetles or Mexican bean beetles. Similarly, diligent shaking of plants, such as plum curculio beetles on grapes or tomato hornworms on vegetables, can dislodge these insects and allow them to drop off the plant.