RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

Research Examines Why Insects Give Us an Itchy Feeling

Why is it that seeing, discussing, or even just thinking about creepy crawlers makes us feel itchy all over? It turns out the experts aren’t sure, according to a story on MSNBC.com titled "Spiders! Ants! Did that make you itchy? Here's why”

University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Dr. Wenqin Luo places the blame for phantom itch on memories of an itchy past. Thinking about bugs, she explains, might prompt memories of previous experiences – “itchy associations.”

Why, then, doesn’t thinking about injuries prompt our bodies to feel phantom pains?

Dr. Luo offers the following theory: “Compared with itch, pain is a serious protective mechanism that triggers avoidance behavior. Thus, the threshold to trigger a pain sensation may be much higher than that of itch.”

Basically: If our brains registered pain (a danger) as easily as they do itch (an annoyance), our bodies would be sent into constant states of false alarm.

Dr. Glenn J. Giesler, Jr., a neuroscientist from the University of Minnesota offers a slightly different guess as to the phantom itch culprit: Maybe our skin always experiences the tiny sensations capable of causing light itch – but we only notice them when we’ve already got itch (or its creepy crawly causes) on the brain.

“It is amazing to me how easy it is to induce itch in others,” says Giesler. “Whenever I give a talk on the topic, I am amused at the percentage of people in the audience who start scratching.”

“Perhaps,” he guesses, “the threshold for sensation of itch is lowered by thinking about it.”

Dr. Gil Yosipovitch is a professor of dermatology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina. He’s also the founder of the International Forum for the Study of Itch.

Source: MSNBC.com

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

Fleas’ ‘Feet’ Unleash That Spectacular Leap

When fleas jump, it is no ordinary leap. The insects can shoot as high as 38 times their body length, about three inches. And the acceleration is so intense that fleas have to withstand 100 Gs, or 100 times the force of gravity. “You and I pass out if we experience five Gs,” said Malcolm Burrows, an expert on insect jumping at the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Burrows and his Cambridge colleague Gregory Sutton obtained the fleas from Tiggywinkles to try to answer a question that had vexed naturalists for centuries: how fleas manage their spectacular jumps. They report that the insects turn themselves into catapults, storing up energy that they release as they push off the ground with what passes, in fleas, for feet.

• It takes about a thousandth of a second for a flea to hurl itself into the air.
• Fleas generate a hundred times more power than their muscles can actually provide.

Exerpts from NY Times.com

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

“The lord in his wisdom made the fly. Then forgot to tell us why.” ~ Ogden Nash

The reproductive capacity of flies is tremendous. Thankfully for us they can never be fully realized. If you took just a pair of flies in April and they were all progenitors (originator or direct ancestor), and they all survived (flies typically only live 30 days) until August you would have 191,010,000,000,000,000,000 flies!!!! That is in just four months!

To give you a visual idea of how many flies that is, it is enough flies to cover the entire earth 2.5 feet deep!

Unfortunately flies are downplayed in society ala “Waiter there is a fly in my soup. What’s he doing? I believe the backstroke!” The hard fact is that flies transmit over 25 diseases and are VERY serious pests especially in food handling facilities. The risk of bacterial transmission is enormous. Call EHS at 877-507.0698 to protect your brand!

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, MA , Pest Control, RI

Big Brains Steal Insects’ Breath Away (From The NY Times)

There is a type of cockroach that can go without breathing for seven minutes at a time, and a moth pupa that can go several hours without breathing. Now a new study in The American Naturalist reports that there is a commonality among insects displaying this behavior: they have large, complex brain structures.

The behavior, known as discontinuous gas exchange, is seen only in certain insects, and only when they are in a resting state.

“If you’ve got a big brain, it’s costly to run,” said Philip Matthews, a physiologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and the study’s lead author. “If you go into a sleeplike state, you can save energy.”

When in this state, the insect will stop breathing for a long period of time, followed by a series of short breaths, and then one long breath.

To conduct the study, Dr. Matthews and a colleague, Craig White, studied the brains of several species of insects that display this behavior.

They found that when the insects’ brains were removed, they displayed discontinuous breathing patterns.

“They have a nerve cord comprised of ganglia, which are kind of like mini-brains,” said Dr. Matthews. “We think that when the insect is active, the brain is sending a constant message to breathe, but when it’s inactive the ganglia take over.”

The breathing pattern has been seen in different species of wasps, ants, moths, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles and cockroaches.

Previously, scientists have hypothesized that insects display this behavior to more effectively retain water. But this seemed unlikely when the breathing pattern was found among insects in dry deserts and in the humid tropics.

George Williams
General Manager

Pest Control, MA ,  Pest Control, RI

The U.S. air force is studying fruit flies to mimic swarming behavior for military needs.

The US Air Force is engaged in wacky research on fruit flies maneuvering within a heavily instrumented "simulation tunnel" in order to develop tiny, potentially murderous insect-sized flying robots.

According to a statement issued yesterday by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), research underway at in Californian labs will teach military designers how to build tiny robot aircraft which can fly around indoors or in built-up areas the way flies do.

"This work investigates sensory-motor feedback mechanisms in the insect brain that could inspire new approaches to flight stabilization and navigation in future insect-sized vehicles for the military," said Dr Willard Larkin of AFOSR.

Dr Andrew Straw of Caltech, leading the project for the Air Force, has built a special arena for his test flies to aviate around in, with video walls allowing a simulated environment to be presented to the fly. The insect test subject is tracked using a cunning multi-camera system.

"We developed a 3D fly tracking system which was our most significant technical challenge: localizing a fly in 3D nearly instantaneously," says Straw. "Next, we developed visual stimulus software capable of making use of this information to project virtual edges and textured floors in which we could modify the fly's sensory-motor feedback mechanism."

According to the AFOSR:

"The scientists have found that, counter to earlier studies suggesting that insects adjust their height by measuring the motion beneath them as they fly, flies in fact follow horizontal edges of objects to regulate altitude. Remarkably, this edge following behavior is very similar to a rule they use for steering left and right and always turning towards vertical edges."

If Straw and his colleagues can work out the rules the flies use to navigate - thought to be primarily visually based - it could be possible to design control systems for so-called Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs, small robot aircraft already in development) which would let them maneuver in places where there is no GPS signal.

Then the dark/exciting future shown in the vid above could become reality, with tiny military swarm droids scattering across towns or cities to locate or spy on persons of interest to the US authorities. They might even, as shown in the vid at around three minutes, be able to land on the back of your neck and blow your head off using some kind of tiny warhead.

Amazing what they can do nowadays.

By Lewis Page
Posted in Rise of the Machines, 8th December 2010 17:00 GMT

Allston-Brighton —

Neighborhoods in Boston, including Allston and Brighton, have reported a surge in bedbug complaints, especially as the parasites have become more prevalent in large cities across the U.S. in recent years.

During a seminar addressing the growing number of bedbug infestations in the city, Jonathan Boyar, principal of Ecologic Entomology, spoke to 20 residents and landlords at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square on Feb. 22, 2010 about how to identify and eradicate bedbugs.

Many neighborhoods in Boston have had a rise in the number of complaints during the last three years, with Allston and Brighton just behind East Boston for the most. Housing Commissioner Dion Irish of the Inspectional Services Department said places with a large number of renters tend to see more bedbugs. But he said the problem has improved since before when 75 percent of complaints citywide came from Allston and Brighton. “It’s a highly transient place. It’s always going to be a problem,” Irish said in regards to the large college student population that contributes to high resident turnover.

Problems occur when residents take used furniture from the street, but Boyar said bedbugs can also come into buildings from clothing, luggage and other belongings. He urged the audience to avoid Dumpster diving and buying antiques, and to check rooms when staying at hotels.“The nicest hotels in America can have bedbugs. It’s not just seedy hotels,” Boyar said.

When there is suspicion of an infestation, Boyar recommended calling a reputable pest management company right away for an inspection that can cost anywhere from $250 to $500. He said the best pest control companies send at least two people to inspect the entire residence, but do not guarantee pest eradication because it is impossible to do so.

“If you don’t have folks going through this level of treatment, you’re going to have problems. This stuff is tedious,” Boyar said. “The guys that do this stuff love it. They can’t wait to see which one is worse than the next.”

Inspectors will check all crevices and furniture and if it is badly infested, they may suggest disposing of furniture, covering it with a plastic covering before bringing it outside. Clothing and other infested belongings can also be thrown in the dryer because bedbugs cannot survive conditions over 140 degrees.

While inspectors may use a pesticide, Boyar said to avoid over-the-counter bug sprays because they can “make a mess of the problem” since they don’t do a good job of killing all of the bugs. He also said that sometimes the bugs develop a tolerance of the over-the-counter sprays.

Landlords who own buildings with many infestations may consider fumigation or thermal treatments, but these can be costly.  Bedbugs can crop up in the most unexpected places. Boyar showed a videotape of bedbugs — they typically hide in small crevices until coming out at night to feed on humans. “They have a tendency to cluster. They’re looking for the same sort of environment,” Boyar said.

That environment is typically close to the bug’s food source, such as mattress seams, box springs, curtains or under baseboards and carpets. While they prefer warm surfaces, Boyar said bedbugs have been found on cool metal surfaces and can survive for a year without a meal, but tend to feed every two to four days.

What also makes bedbugs hard to detect, Boyar said, is that in most cases, people do not feel the bite while they are sleeping. And after it finishes feeding, the insect crawls away to digest its meal. Those who are bitten wake up to a row of bites that may appear the next morning or several days later.