Gleanings from ICE 2016

After an unintentional break in blogging due to a month of travel, I'm finally caught up enough to sit down with my notes and remember what it was all about.

If you can imagine thousands of entomologists swarming a convention center like fire ants on Cheetos, that's what it was like at the 25th International Congress of Entomology (ICE) held in Orlando, FL.  Held every three years, and rotating to a different nation every time, the ICE is the largest gathering of professional insect experts in the world--and this one may have been the biggest ever.  This year there were over 6,600 registrants from 102 countries, giving 5,396 presentations.

This was my first ICE, and it was overwhelming. It seemed like I spent half my week just sorting through the program to know which sessions and posters I should attend.  So probably like everyone who attends the ICE, I came away feeling like I had a unique, though very limited, perspective on the meeting.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the Congress was meeting insect geeks from around the world. Some were bench scientists (who work in the laboratory), others worked in the field (including one enthusiastic fellow I met from Germany who brought his own dung on a field trip to trap Florida dung beetles--and it worked!).  There were first time visitors to the U.S., and many young and enthusiastic students. I met scientists from Finland, Vietnam, Australia, Kenya, and Iraq. But in the research sessions we were all just entomologists, despite different dress, language or customs.

So here are some highlights of my notes from the many hours of sitting in sessions and looking at PowerPoint slides:

• German cockroach resistance to baits was the subject of a paper by NC State University researcher Jules Silverman. When comparing a susceptible German cockroach strain versus a field strain from Puerto Rico, his team found resistance to fipronil (15-20X), indoxacarb (15,000X) and even hydramethynon (350X). This was the first time hydramethylnon physiological resistance (as opposed to avoidance) has been found. Even with this resistance, in the lab they still saw complete control of cockroaches with gel baits.  But control was not as good in field trials where cockroaches had access to other foods.  My take home message was that we must be careful in our use of cockroach baits, and use them in combination with sanitation, sprays and other control tactics if we want to preserve them for coming years.

• Paula Stigler Granados from the UT School of Public Health reported on the status of Chagas disease in the U.S.  Dr. Granados leads a task force studying the best way to protect human health from this important, disease transmitted by kissing bugs.  Doctors tend to downplay the risk of Chagas disease and rarely test for the disease.  Blood banks only test for Chagas if a person is a first time donor; hence some are concerned about the possibility of our U.S. blood supply becoming contaminated with the Chagas disease parasite. It's estimated that as many as 98-99% of cases in the U.S. remain undiagnosed.
        Educational awareness among doctors and patients will be a focus of the Texas Chagas task force, along with better screening, diagnosis and treatment.  Chagas is a chronic and ultimately fatal disease.  In previous years it was considered untreatable; but with a new drug therapy it now can be treated in earlier stages. Getting the drug to people who need it is still a challenge, however.
• In related papers Dr. Gabe Hamer from Texas A&M reported on the results of a citizen science effort to study kissing bugs. From 2013 to 2015, they collected 2,812 bugs from 98 different Texas counties. The most common species detected was Triatoma gerstaeckeri, with 63% of those collected infected with the Chagas disease pathogen.  Another study by Rodion Gorchakov from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston showed that humans are the most common host for kissing bugs collected by citizen scientists in Texas with human blood found in 66% of bugs.  So why not more Chagas disease in Texas and other parts of the U.S.?  The current theory is that gerstaeckeri and our other native kissing bug species are not very good at transmitting the disease during biting--something to be thankful for.
• A couple of the more interesting and fun talks I attended were on insects and Japanese art and culture.  Some of you may know Dr. Nan Yao Su, developer of the Sentricon system concept at the University of Florida.  Turns out he is interested in insect influences on Japanese culture.  
• Gunter Miller, from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, spoke on the process of developing effective attractive toxic sugar baits (ATSBs) for mosquito control.  Based on the fact that both male and female mosquitoes feed on natural sugar sources (like nectar, honeydew), ATSBs must be competitive with these natural sources, so the process of developing these baits is more complicated than just mixing sugar with a pesticide and spraying it on plants.  Their lab developed a "mosquito sangria" mixture (includes beer and Sangria) that will remain attractive to mosquitoes for more than a month after spraying.  Their technology is being used in the Terminix All Clear Mosquito Bait Spray.  This approach to mosquito control has attracted a lot of attention because of its potential to control some Aedes mosquitoes (vectors of Zika, and the most common daytime biters), and because of its need for less insecticide that might be harmful to beneficial insects.  
• Joel Coats from Iowa State University has been studying alternatives to PBO, the most commonly used synergist for pyrethrins and other pyrethroid insecticides.  He found that many of the plant extracts he tested synergized permethrin as well or better than PBO, and many worked faster than PBO.  Apparently PBO was developed early as a standard synergist for the industry, and few people have taken the time to look at alternatives over the past 50 years. Having an organic synergist could be a real market boost to pyrethrins sprays, most of which cannot be sold as organic because of the synthetic PBO needed to make it effective.
• According to MacKenzie Kjeldgaard of Texas A&M University, who analyzed ant gut contents with sophisticated DNA techniques, the fire ant's top food source was crickets, but also included springtails, caterpillars, flies and spiders.  
• Freder Medina introduced a new BASF termiticide injection system using Termidor H.E.  The new application system uses 4000 psi pressure to inject the insecticide into the ground, eliminating the need for drenching.  The system will come with a base unit and mobile app to communicate with BASF.  You should be hearing more about this in 2017.
• Last, I had a pleasant surprise in the commercial exhibits when I discovered a new book just published by Stephen Doggett, University of Sydney, Australia.  Stephen is a well known bed bug researcher, but had the genius to put out a handy photographic guide to bed bug infestations for, well, just about anyone.  It has dozens of excellent photos, tells where and how to spot bed bugs and what to do if you find bed bugs in your home. This should be a useful resource to share with pest control customers, and as a training tool for employees.  Self published, and not widely available, but you can get it at BioQuip books for about $7.

Of course there was much much more information at ICE this year, some of which I may incorporate in future posts.  But it's Saturday and time to get on to other activities. I hope some of this has been interesting and helpful.

Bed bugs in China

A recent article published in the Journal of Medical Entomology by entomologists at South China Agricultural University caught my eye today. The study reported on bed bug infestation rates of homes in two south China cities.  While the results were not very detailed, they do give an interesting peek inside the world's most populous country with some of the world's most crowded cities.

The size of its cities, and the potential pest control market, in China is staggering. The combined population of the two cities in this study is 18.75 million (Texas population is about 27 million), and each of the two cities in the survey support approximately 1000 pest control companies (Texas supports about 3,000 companies statewide).

In addition to dense urban populations, city residents are highly mobile.  In one of the cities, the transient population (recent arrivals from the countryside and other cities) was estimated at 78%! Such conditions seem tailor-made for bed bugs, who are easily transported in luggage.  In addition, in the winter most of the population in the two cities simply vanishes into the countryside for the very important Spring Festival.

Surprisingly, until now the bed bug has not been reported as a major, widespread pest in China; though according to this survey, that may be changing.  A preliminary survey of 11 companies from the two cities estimated that 35% of all accounts being treated involved bed bugs. In examining the records of two medium to large sized pest control companies, 29-42% of all service visits involved bed bug infestations. In the largest city, Shenzhen, 91.1% of all rooms in apartments treated were infested with bed bugs, and 56% of workers quarters were treated for bed bugs.  In the neighboring city of Dongguan, 83.7% of serviced apartments had bed bugs, and 61% of worker quarters treated were infested.

By the way, China has double trouble with both the tropical bed bug, Cimex hemipterus, and the common bed bug, C. lectularius.

With its 1.3 billion citizens, China is a huge pest control market. The same with Mexico and other Latin American countries.  I've been thinking about this recently because the U.S. is hosting the International Congress on Entomology in 2016 in Orlando, FL. This will be the largest gathering of entomologists in the world, including top experts in urban and structural pest control.  It seems to me that PMPs as well as research and extension entomologists have a lot to learn about the way pest control is conducted in other countries. So if you are ready to learn more about your global partners in pest control, consider making a trip to the ICE in two years.