Pest control involves reducing pest numbers to levels where they no longer cause unacceptable harm. This is often done through a combination of prevention and suppression.
Understanding what makes a pest tick can highlight weaknesses that can help control them. For example, a hard, soapy spray of water can dislodge many insects such as plum curculio beetles and hornworms from fruit trees. Contact Pest Control O’fallon MO now!
Preventive steps are the first line of defense against pest infestations. These include removing food, water and shelter sources. For the home, this includes storing foods in sealed containers, regularly sweeping and vacuuming floors to remove crumbs and pet droppings, and fixing leaky plumbing. It also includes minimizing the amount of clutter in and around the house, which provides hiding places for pests, and sealing small cracks and crevices that they might use to enter. It is also important to keep in mind that pests are most active during certain seasons, such as cockroaches in winter and mosquitoes in summer.
Another preventive step is learning about the pests you are dealing with, their life cycles and habits, and options for control. This information can help you identify and spot problems more quickly, as well as make prevention methods more effective. For example, knowing that many pests are winged allows you to recognize their flight pattern and estimate their potential rate of spread once they become a nuisance. Also, understanding the developmental stages of a pest — egg, larva, nymph, pupa and adult — helps you determine when to intervene in their development, as some controls are most effective at specific stages.
When prevention measures fail or the pest population becomes unacceptable, suppression methods may be used to reduce their numbers. Some common strategies include trapping, baiting and spraying. Some chemicals can be harmful to people and the environment, so it is important to evaluate all options carefully before using them. It is also a good idea to take steps to minimize the amount of chemical residue that lingers on surfaces, such as spraying or dusting during periods when there is minimal potential for drift and runoff.
Suppression of pests also involves introducing natural enemies to the environment. These can be predators, parasitoids or pathogens. Some of these enemies are naturally occurring, such as nematodes or fungus, and others are commercially available. For instance, bacteria such as Bacillus thuringiensis and entomopathogenic nematodes can dramatically reduce pest populations when applied at the correct time, place and conditions.
Suppression
Pests can cause serious harm to plants and people, so it is important to take steps to keep them at bay. Suppression methods aim to reduce the number of pests to a level where they are no longer harmful. These methods use a combination of prevention and control techniques to achieve the best results.
Steps to Prevent Infestations
Preventive measures can be as simple as removing the things that attract pests to homes and farms. Clutter provides places for pests to breed and hide, so getting rid of it can make a huge difference. Regularly discarding trash in sealed containers can also reduce infestations, as should storing food in the refrigerator or using tightly-closed lids on garbage cans. It is essential to seal any cracks and crevices where pests can enter, as well. Caulking can be a good option for this, as can filling gaps with steel wool or expanding foam. Screens on windows, doors and vents can also be helpful against most pests.
The climate can also influence the growth of pests by affecting their host plants. Weather conditions such as rain, cold temperatures, frost and drought affect the rate of plant growth, which can reduce the population of pests eating that particular type of plant. Pests can also be affected by predatory or parasitic species that feed on them, such as birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, or by diseases spread by bacteria, fungus or protozoans, that suppress their populations.
Natural Forces
Geographical features such as mountains and large bodies of water restrict the spread of many pests, while natural barriers like grassy buffers can stop the movement of chemicals into surface waters. Farmers can use scouting and monitoring programs, including crop rotations, economic thresholds and soil testing to help guide their suppression activities. Records should be kept to identify the pests that occur in an area so the right suppression tactics can be used. Monitoring can also help inform future prevention and avoidance strategies.
Eradication
Pests are a major concern to many people. They can cause harm to health or property and may even kill. There are a variety of pests that people consider to be a nuisance, including rodents, bed bugs, cockroaches, termites, hornets and wasps. These pests can be a danger to human life, as some carry and spread diseases, such as the plague, smallpox and tuberculosis. Others bite or sting, such as spiders, fleas, house centipedes and earwigs. In some cases, pests can cause damage to the environment and our food supply, like defoliating trees and crops, or contaminate food, such as with salmonella, listeria and E. coli.
There are a few ways to control unwanted pests. Preventive measures include reducing the conditions that promote pest infestations, such as frequently cleaning areas where pests are likely to live and storing foods in sealed containers. Suppression methods include preventing pests from reproducing and/or reestablishing, such as by spraying or physically removing them. Physical barriers such as fences, traps and mulch can exclude pests and reduce damage.
Eradication is rarely the goal in outdoor pest situations, but can be achieved in some enclosed environments, such as indoor dwellings and facilities used for food processing and preparation. In these instances, eradication is often supported by government funding. The Mediterranean fruit fly, gypsy moth and fire ant control programs are examples of this type of support.
Several natural remedies can help control pests, from essential oils to fly traps to food grade Diatomaceous Earth. These solutions are generally safer for children and pets, but they take longer to work than chemical solutions. The first step in any pest control effort is to classify the species in question, as different solutions are effective against different pests. For example, a vinegar solution may repel mosquitoes but not mosquito larvae. A smartphone can serve as a valuable tool for this purpose, with numerous apps available that identify and classify plants and insects. Then, the user can research appropriate treatments. This method of pest control is commonly known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
Natural Forces
Preventing pest infestations requires a combination of tactics, depending on the situation. Physical barriers like fences, screens and traps can stop a pest from reaching desirable plants; pheromones, heat or microbial pathogens can interrupt the life cycle of some insects, fungi and mites; and changing food availability, water sources, roosting sites or shelters can disrupt their behavior and reduce population levels. Cultural controls, such as soil cultivation practices and modification of irrigation and use of disease-resistant varieties, can also inhibit the emergence of certain organisms that cause crop damage.
Eradication is rarely the end goal of pest control, but it is often necessary to achieve for some diseases. Eradication is a rare and expensive effort that requires strong surveillance, rapid identification and intervention of individuals infected with the disease; monitoring, including anthropometrics and genetic markers, to keep track of the population and control outbreaks; and community engagement in eradication efforts. Eradication is often hampered by the emergence of nonhuman hosts (as in guinea worm eradication), resistance to insecticides or other interventions (as in malaria or yellow fever eradication), or political issues and cultural attitudes (as in poliomyelitis eradication).
Biological control involves conserving and releasing natural enemies, such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens, to suppress pest populations. Common examples include aphid parasites in orchards, Bacillus thuringiensis bacterial biocontrol agents in field crops and nematodes that kill harmful soil grubs in greenhouses. Many of these natural enemies are commercially available.
Increasing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes can increase the effectiveness of natural pest control by providing more food and shelter for natural enemy species. Managing farmland in ways that promote diversity, such as establishing noncrop areas and using low-impact tillage and temporal crop rotation, can also strengthen natural enemy complementarity and enhance crop regulation. The optimization of these natural pest control services could reduce our dependence on pesticides and foster yield stability through ecological intensification in agriculture.