Moving Beyond Mallis: Young Entomologists at NCUE

The biannual National Conference on Urban Entomology (NCUE) is always a treat.  It’s a relatively small conference with a personal feel. Many attendees know each other personally, and new students get to learn more about urban entomology outside their labs and classrooms. This year’s meeting in Raleigh, NC attracted about 200 students, university faculty and industry urban entomologists, including a score of researchers from the joint invasive pest ant conference.

When I attend NCUE I see folks whose lives and careers I’ve followed for many years, as well as new faces who are the future of our industry.  I hear controversy in discussion sessions as researchers politely prod speakers to think more deeply about their research results (entomologists are almost always polite); and sometimes I hear talks that will change the way I view structural pest control. While there were no real revelations at this meeting, many of the talks I heard this year fell into the category of “baby steps” toward better pest control and deeper understanding of the biology of structural pests.

Every NCUE meeting has a Distinguished Achievement Award recipient. This year’s honor went to Brian Forschler, a respected termite researcher from the University of Georgia. It was his job to open the meeting with a tribute to Arnold Mallis, who many of you know by his “ten-pound” Handbook of Pest Control. 

In the 1940s and 50s Arnold Mallis was a
rising star in the field of urban entomology.

Forschler noted that Mallis filled a desperate need at the time for science-based information on household insect pests. Though he had little to say about IPM (the concept hadn’t been formally proposed), in his books he summarized critical biological information upon which IPM programs could later be built. Mallis taught us that urban entomology is built upon a firm foundation of education and engagement with its stakeholders. Forschler urged each attendee, especially each student, to consider new ways to engage outsiders with urban entomology, while being the same consummate entomologist, naturalist and observer of insects as Arnold Mallis.

After Forschler’s session, the meeting began with papers from student award winners.  When I listen to students I always keep in mind that today’s students are tomorrow’s experts.  In just a few years these will be the folks making the rounds at CEU meetings for NPMA and other professional gatherings, so it pays to listen and make note of the new faces.

Emily Vernon, Bachelor of Science Student Award winner came from North Carolina State University where she studies Blattabacterium, a genus of symbiotic bacteria that live within special bacteria-hosting cells of cockroaches. These bacteria, she proposed, are essential to the German cockroach’s ability to survive in nitrogen-poor environments. In her research with 16S ribosomal RNA primers she detected high levels of variability in Blattabacterium in field populations of cockroaches, leading her to pose the question: “if we can manipulate Blattabacterium in the cockroach, might we be able to control cockroaches in the field?” I don’t know the answer, but I do know that when I was her age my most profound questions dealt with where to go for pizza on Friday night. Wow!

Master’s Student Award winner, Danielle Hoefele, Simon Fraser University, tackled a whole new structural pest, the European fire ant, Myrmica rubra. Think of it as a fire ant for the north.  The European fire ant is spreading into British Columbia and Washington State, as well as New England and eastern Canada.  It’s an aggressive ant with a sting that itches up to 10 days.  Danielle looked for different food sources that might work well in a fire ant bait. She found that baits combining carbohydrates and proteins were most attractive. Ultimately, she hopes to design a custom bait to provide a much-needed control option for this pest.

The herb thyme is a natural source for the monoterpene oil,
thymol, which has promise as a natural insecticide against
bed bugs. Relatively few plant oils have been investigated for
use in urban entomology. 

Sudip Gaire from Purdue University was the Ph.D. Student Award winner for his studies on the effects of plant essential oils against bed bugs. Sudip is pursuing more effective, safer, natural insecticides for bed bugs.  By looking at plant essential oils that have not previously been tested, he hopes to discover better options for controlling insecticide-resistant bed bugs.  He found carvacol, thymol, and citronellic acid to have to be the most toxic plant oils, none of which is currently in use against bed bugs. It may be years before these products are successfully brought to market, but Sudip is starting the process, and he reminded me that the field of essential oils for pest control is ripe for mining.

In another student paper, Sanjay Basnet from the University of Nebraska, is looking at ways to turn the bed bug’s own genetic material against itself. Interference RNA, or RNAi, are small RNA strings found naturally in the cell that help block expression of target genes. A few years back, someone got the bright idea that if we could find the right RNAi strings we might be able to use them as insecticides to turn off genes that are critical for an insect’s survival or reproduction. Sanjay thinks he may have found such an RNAi strand—one that can reduce egg production in bed bugs.  When injected into bed bugs this natural and biodegradable molecule reduced average daily egg production from 6/day to 0/day at 3 and 4 weeks after treatment. Much more work is needed to bring this kind of technology to your company; but its always encouraging to hear about any progress in this area.

One of today's rising stars of urban entomology is Zach DeVries, PhD student at North Carolina State under major professor Coby Schal.  DeVries is looking at a previously ignored component of bed bug aggregation pheromone called histamine.  You’ve probably heard of histamine. It’s an important chemical that our bodies produce to regulate our local immune response. On the positive side, histamine allows capillaries to become more permeable to our white blood cells so they can engage pathogens during an infection.  On the downside, it’s the chemical that causes inflammation and itching after an insect bite or exposure to an allergen. That’s why you may take an antihistamine drug for a runny nose or itchy eyes. Histamine also affects numerous organs, causes increases in heartrate, and difficulty breathing.

DeVries and colleagues inspected house dust from homes with and without bed bugs. They found up to 25X higher levels of histamine in bed bug-infested homes. They also found that histamine persisted for 3-6 months after an infestation had been eliminated. Whether these relatively low levels of histamine associated with bed bugs will have chronic effects on human health is unknown. But if significant, DeVries’ team’s discovery could be as important to pest control as the discovery of the link between German cockroaches and asthma in the 1990s.

DeVries also gave a second, more controversial, paper on progress towards developing a liquid bait for bed bugs. He suggests that liquid baits might offer an alternative insecticide-delivery method that could bypass at least one of the resistance strategies used by bed bugs (such as thickened, pesticide resistant cuticles).  So far, De Vries has identified good active ingredients (such as fipronil, neonicotinoids, and DMSO) for such a bait.  The feeding attractant for bed bugs is more of a challenge, however. Bed bugs eat blood of course, which is not likely to be stable in a bait formulation. And who wants blood-filled bait stations around their home?  He found that simple salt water, with or without the natural cellular compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP), made an attractive feeding stimulant for bed bugs.  The challenge, he argues, is to come up with a way to deliver this tasty insecticide to hungry bed bugs.  

But some listeners gently challenged DeVries to demonstrate how baiting might be more effective than a good trap, say.  The reason that most cockroach, termite and ant baits are so effective, is that they don’t just kill the individuals that come to the bait. They are effective because they kill the feeders and their companions. This happens when other cockroaches eat the feces or dead bodies of bait-fed cockroaches, or when ants and termites share their toxic meals with nestmates. At this point it’s hard to see how you might get secondary kill with bed bugs. Time will tell whether NCSU researchers will demonstrate the practicality of blood-mimicking bait stations; but it’s a thought provoking idea, and I’m glad someone is exploring it.

Whew. That was just some of what I learned from students at NCUE last month.  In my next installment, I’ll cover some of the highlights from veteran urban entomologists in Raleigh. 

Working with health inspectors

Last week I had the privilege of providing IPM training to a group of state and local health inspectors from south Texas.  It was the first time I've had the chance to train health inspectors and it was an interesting experience. 

I learned that being a health inspector is likely to permanently dull your enjoyment of going out to eat.  After all, health inspectors see the (sometimes) scary underbelly of the food services industry.  Even in the restaurants with good records, if an inspector eats out, he or she is wondering how long the salad's been out, if the preparer was wearing clean gloves,  whether the refrigerators are cold enough, and if the dishwashers have been properly trained to disinfect the silverware.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Unlike Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (I've not seen the movie, but the subtitle is "They'll give anyone a badge"), these folks were professionals, very dedicated to their work and making sure the public health is protected.

The other thing I learned was how hungry these health inspectors are for IPM information.  Relatively few inspectors in our group seemed to have a strong understanding of pest management principles, or how the pest control business works. 

One of the more interesting discussions we had concerned the use of sticky cards as monitoring devices in restaurants.  As a PMP, you may have encountered restaurant owners who are unwilling to allow insect sticky cards in their establishment because they are afraid that any insects on the cards might alert the inspector to an insect problem that they might not otherwise know about.  After our training and discussion, everyone in the class agreed that having sticky cards in an establishment was a positive thing, as it showed that the owner cared, and was serious about monitoring the condition of the business.  [Of course sticky cards can be a two-edged sword.  Sticky cards that are not maintained and changed regularly can reflect conditions that no longer exist in the restaurant, and are likely a sign of lack of attention to detail on the part of the technician.] 

I learned that health inspectors try to look at the bigger picture when they score an eating establishment, school or day care.  An inspector will not necessarily consider a single cockroach on a trap or on the floor an "unacceptable" infestation.  It takes more infractions than just cockroaches or rodents to shut down a restaurant.  The inspector considers the overall condition of the facility, if the owners are making an effort to solve pest problems and whether they're employing the expertise of a professional. 

A good PMP can make the job of a health inspector easier.  Sticky cards and bait stations should be signed and dated every inspection.  Detailed documentation of what species of pests were observed, what conducive conditions for pests you've noted, pesticide types and amounts used, along with non-chemical controls employed, and the progress of the pest control program can be very helpful to an inspector. 

Health inspectors can be, and should be, the allies of pest control professionals.  After all, the goal of both kinds of professionals should be the same, namely: clean, pest-free and sanitary eating and living places.  I wish for our industry a better and closer relationship with health inspectors.  If you have the chance to meet an inspector don't neglect to ask them questions about how your customer's restaurants are scoring, what their perspectives are on pest control, and maybe provide some information about how your company approaches IPM.  You might gain a referral or two; and you might help them understand your perspective a little better.  

For my part, I hope to do more trainings with these public health professionals.  Wouldn't it be nice to know that your health inspector feels comfortable eating at any of the restaurants your company services?  That would be worth celebrating with a nice dinner out. 

The most realistic cockroach robot yet

Ever stay up late at night thinking about the sprawled alternating tripod gait of cockroaches? Neither have I. But fortunately for all of us, some brainy folks at the University of California at Berkeley have. They've created DASH, the Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, certainly one of the most realistic insect robots I've seen. If nothing else, DASH help me appreciate a little more of the elegance of nature. Seeing the simplicity of cockroach running mechanics demonstrated by a machine with just a few basic "moves" gives me a better appreciation for one of our fastest pests, Periplaneta americana, or the American cockroach. It also gives me an appreciation for the advances in materials technology, not to mention the creativity of the folks at Berkeley. I'll never look at a scurrying American roach in quite the same way.

Oh and did I mention it's a little creepy at the same time? Happy Halloween.

Peanuts and Paper Trails

This story is just too relevant to the daily news and the pest control industry not to pass on. Dahleen Glanton, with the Chicago Tribune, reported this week on sanitary conditions and pest problems at the Peanut Corporation of America in Blakely, GA. According to the article, Georgia state inspectors found repeated cleanliness problems at the plant from 2006 to 2008, including grease and food buildup and gaps in doors that could allow rodents to enter. According to workers, not a day went by that they didn't see roaches or rats in the facility.

I don't know who will ultimately be found responsible, but the whole stinky mess has me wondering about the sanitation reporting system at the plant. I can guarantee that lawyers will be looking for paper trails as soon as they can. And if the plant had a contracted pest management company, I sure hope they did a good job of documenting problems to both lower and upper management levels of the company. If not, the reputation, not to mention the bank account of the pest control company could be in as much hot water as the plant management.

How's your sanitation reporting system? Are your service technicians conscientious about reporting sanitation lapses? If you're a service manager don't assume that those service tickets with inspection reports get to the people who need to know. Encourage your staff to let you know when sanitation reports appear to be getting ignored by a commercial customer. It might be worth your time to call the owner or plant manager to let them know when there seems to be a sanitation problem that makes your job more difficult. In this case someone's mistakes sickened 500 people and killed eight.

Pest Control for Hotels

I've been staying at the same hotel in College Station for the past twenty years and have watched many managers and more than one remodeling come and go. I've got a grudging affection for the place, despite it's worn sidewalks and sometimes thin walls. Maybe it's convenience, maybe it's because the place is a magnet for other Extension employees during conferences, and maybe it's just the relationship you develop with a business partner over time. Mostly the place has returned my loyalty with good service and a friendly staff--not to mention, free Internet and breakfasts.

My colleagues and I joke about it being time to move to better accommodations, but until this week I've resisted. On two different nights this week I found a cockroach in my room (neither of which survived the encounter, I should add).

The strength of my repulsion about the cockroaches surprised me. I'm not one to regularly check my headboard for bed bugs before settling in a hotel room. Spiders don't bother me at all (unless they're brown recluse spiders). But the free-range German cockroaches in my room changed my feelings about my room.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not especially squeamish about German cockroaches. I handle them in the lab; I've reared them and even bought them, for goodness sake. But it's different when they show up next to your bed stand. I start wondering, "Where else has this guy been?" "Where will he go when the lights are out?" and "Do I open my mouth when I snore?"

To me as a customer, the cockroach was more than an icky bug . It represented an invasion of my quiet place--the place I come to relax at the end of the day and sort out my thoughts--the place I expect to be even cleaner and more tidy than my own home (at least messes at home are my messes). To me, it ultimately represented a lack of caring on the part of the hotel management and staff.

Now I know it's probably impossible for a hotel to guarantee that a guest will never encounter a pest. And I hope and believe, after reporting my concerns, that this hotel will call a professional to service and inspect that room--and rooms around it. But I also know that for every cockroach seen when the lights are on, there are probably at least a dozen more in hiding. One cockroach might be an accident. As an entomologist, I know that two is no accident.

The funny thing is that the night after I discovered my unwanted visitors, I entered my room to find that it hadn't been serviced that day. Trash in the trash can, bed unmade, towels where I left them in the morning. It was still the cockroach that caused me to decide to find alternative accommodations, but the poor room service confirmed to me that my first reaction was correct. The hotel didn't care any more.

So why the long rant about last week's hotel stay? The incident reminded me of the importance of customer service and the importance of the pest control industry. To some people we may just be the "bug guys" and "bug gals", but we know better. We keep people in business while protecting the public.

Lest we pat ourselves on the backs too hard, a word about quality of service: It's too easy to pass the buck. If that hotel had pest control service, and it probably did, someone wasn't doing their job. Having been a technician long ago, I know how monotonous some service routes can be. It's always a temptation to slack off in an account, especially one without much "action". Hotels can be among the toughest, because typically you don't see a lot of problems. It's too easy to fall into a careless routine room after same room...e.g., spray [or, if you're doing "IPM", bait] under the sink and behind the toilet and you're out of there.

If your company services hotels, remind your employees to treat every room as if it were the only room they serviced that day. For the hotel's customers, each room is the only room they will see that day. For as few as one or two cockroaches, your hotel might lose a loyal customer--one that likely will tell others. Soon that hotel, your customer, is losing business as it gains the reputation as the hotel with "roaches". And that's bad for your business as well as the hotel.

I'm not sure where I'll stay next time I visit the home of Texas A&M University. But I know what my standards are. And a pest free room is at the top of my list.

IPM Thresholds: More than meets the eye

I've heard several pest management professionals say that they felt thresholds were not practical for their business. "We have a zero tolerance for pests," they typically say, "so thresholds just don't work for us." Health department standards are often cited as a justification for a zero threshold, as many health departments have no tolerance for cockroaches in a food handling establishment.

Developed originally for agriculture, pest thresholds originally meant the level of pest presence on a crop where the damage caused by the pest equaled the cost of treatment (usually the cost of a pesticide application). This concept works well in situations where the cost of a single pest is relatively easily determined. It's much more difficult to establish thresholds where pests are simply a nuisance or where the exact health cost of an individual pest is difficult to define.

The problem of assessing pest damage in indoor environments is especially challenging. What is the cost to a restaurant of a single cockroach in a kitchen? Contrary to the myth that a single cockroach is sufficient to shut down a kitchen, health inspectors, in Texas at least, are charged to "[control pests] to minimize their presence within the physical facility and its contents, and on the contiguous land or property under the control of the permit holder..." Nevertheless, we all know that there are levels of pests that are clearly unacceptable.

Most people would agree that a single cockroach, or one mouse, entering a facility from a recently delivered box of food does not necessarily constitute an "infestation". And one or two cockroaches on a sticky card would likely justify a much different (and less costly) response than, say, 30 cockroaches found on several sticky cards. This is where thresholds can help both the pest control technician and the food establishment manager.

I believe the most useful kind of threshold for these settings is what I call the multiple response threshold, where thresholds are used to guide the appropriate response to escalating pest densities. A good technician understands this concept intuitively, whether he or she realizes it or not.

This week I helped conduct a class on IPM for school maintenance personnel. As part of the class we conducted a pest inspection of a school kitchen. The technician who serviced the school told me he had recently found two cockroaches in a particular area of the kitchen we were inspecting. I asked him what he did, and he said that he conducted a thorough inspection of the area and found no other signs of cockroaches. He did not apply a pesticide, but planned to keep a close eye on this area in the next few visits. When asked what he would have done had he found more cockroaches, he answered that he would have increased sanitation, brought in a vacuum and perhaps placed out some cockroach bait stations.

This is, in my opinion, the proper use of the IPM threshold concept for buildings.

But if a good technician knows this intuitively, then why is it necessary to have written thresholds? There are several reasons I can think of for written thresholds, especially for institutional accounts such schools, restaurants or hospitals: (1) Not all technicians are equally experienced, or understand what to do when they encounter different levels of pest problem; (2) not all institutions or businesses have the same tolerances for pests. If they have been previously reviewed and approved by the customer, written thresholds provide a way to ensure that the technician is familiar with the expectations of each account; (3) technicians rarely keep the same accounts for extended periods of time, so having written thresholds is an excellent training tool and way to standardize service among technicians; (4) the process of developing thresholds is a useful exercise in thinking through your IPM service strategy; and (5) thresholds can save time and expense, especially for institutions where pest control service is based on a work order system. It can be expensive to send technicians out on trivial pest control service calls, when more important calls await. In this case, thresholds can help a manager decide which work order requests deserve immediate response, and which are given lower priority.

If your company does not include written thresholds as part of its commercial IPM program, it may be time to reconsider. Besides being a good idea, having thoughtful and reasonable thresholds might just distinguish your company from competitors who also claim to be doing IPM.