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President's Message
If you missed this year's UK Pest Control Short Course you missed out on a great and well attended meeting. As always, Dr. Michael Potter and his staff did a wonderful job and it showed by a record attendance of over 540 attendees. I would like to specially thank all the vendors that contributed and participated with the expo and sponsorships. Without them, meetings like this would not be as successful. Also, I would like to thank a group of KPMA volunteers that have put a lot of their time toward the success of this meeting. A special thank you to Gary Blankenship who works closely with Dr. Potter and assisted with the arrangements of the hotel and meeting rooms. Additionally I would like to thank Ray Hardebeck, Dr. Chris Christensen, and Scott Underwood for working with all of our vendors and making the expo a huge success.
During our November Board of Director's meeting at the Short Course, we voted once again to donate $5000.00 to Dr. Michael Potter at the University of Kentucky Department of Entomology for Bedbug Research. I included a picture of our board presenting him our check.
I know no one is thinking now about next year's summer meeting as I look out and it is snowing but we are going to be taking nominations for our inaugural KPMA Lifetime Achievement Awards. In our next KPMA newsletter I will be outlining the criteria for this award and we will be taking nominations for consideration. These awards will be presented at our KPMA Summer Meeting Dinner.
If someone has any interesting news regarding their company for submission in the KPMA newsletter, please forward the information to me at shawn.rich@muggabug.com and I will forward the information to NPMA for inclusion in the next newsletter.
Sincerely,
Shawn Rich
KPMA President
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Penn Study Shows Bed Bugs Can Transmit Parasite that Causes Chagas Disease
The bed bug may be just as dangerous as its sinister cousin, the triatomine, or "kissing" bug. A new study from Penn Medicine researchers in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics demonstrated that bed bugs, like the triatomines, can transmit Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease, one of the most prevalent and deadly diseases in the Americas. Click here to read the recent NPMA industry alert regarding this issue.
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Evaluation of Fungal Spores Against Bed Bugs
Over the last decade there has been a growing interest in the use of biological control agents against structural insect pests. A group of scientists from University of Maryland-College Park and USDA, led by Kevin Ulrich, recently evaluated the use of fungal spores, Metarhizium anisopliae, against the bed bugs, Cimex lectularius, in the lab. The entomopathogenic spores, which have been effective against other true bugs, were introduced to the pyrethroid-susceptible bed bugs in a variety of ways, including feeding, contact, and by aerosol spray. Unless humidity levels were exceptionally high (98%), the only delivery method that effectively caused mortality was ingestion, when spores were mixed with a blood product and fed to bed bugs. Ambient humidities in structures are typically much lower than that so the authors of the study concluded that M. anisopliae is not an effective control strategy, at least not in the ways tested in these experiments. However, previous studies have shown another fungus (Beauveria bassiana) to be effective against bed bugs.
This research was published in the most recent volume of the Journal of Economic Entomology under the title, "Exposure of Bed Bugs to Metarhizium anisopliae at Different Humidities".
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Pest Picture of the Month
Ants Tending Aphids
As one of your benefits of KPMA and NPMA membership you are able to download professional pest photos for free at my.npmapestworld.org. Contact npma@pestworld.org if you have any trouble logging in to the site.
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Termites Differential Responses to Mosquito Repellents
A new study, led by Dr. Sunaiyana Sathantriphop of Kasetsart University in Thailand, explored how different populations of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, responded to the most commonly used mosquito repellents (DEET, citronella, and eucalyptus). Two types of populations were evaluated, one group that was susceptible to pyrethroids and one that was resistant to them, though there was no exposure to any pyrethroid products in the study. DEET and citronella elicited stronger behavioral effects than eucalyptus oil, which was not highly repellent in this study. Surprisingly, there were significant differences between pyrethroid-susceptible and pyrethroid-resistant populations in their responses to mosquito repelling compounds. Pyrethroid resistant mosquitoes showed a stronger aversion to repellents in both contact and non-contact experiments than the susceptible mosquitoes. These findings point out the need for additional research to further detail the effectiveness of repellent compounds and to explain how pyrethroid resistance affects behavioral response.
This study was published in the November 2014 volume of the Journal of Medical Entomology under the title, "Comparative Behavioral Responses of Pyrethroid-Susceptible and -Resistant Aedes aegpyti (Diptera: Culicidae) Populations to Citronella and Eucalyptus Oils."
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Evaluating Ant Treatment Protocols
\A new collaborative study between entomologists at the University of California - Riverside and two pest management firms evaluated two treatment protocols for their efficacy against Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) and their subsequent environmental impact. The authors of this study, led by Dr. Les Greenberg, developed two protocols, one bimonthly and the other monthly, that both began with a foundation treatment with a fipronil spray, though they were differentiated with additional treatments. The first protocol (bimonthly) supplemented fipronil with bifenthrin granules applied away from impervious surfaces and spot treatments with a cyfluthrin spray. The second protocol (monthly) also included spot treatments with cyfluthrin but also made prominent use of a botanical insecticide. Ant numbers around the test structures were recorded and no significant differences were found between the two protocols.
This paper was published in a recent volume of the Journal of Economic Entomology under the title, "Practical Pest Management Strategies to Reduce Pesticide Runoff for Argentine Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Control".
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KPMA
10460 North Street
Fairfax, VA 22030
www.kpmaonline.org
kpma@pestworld.org
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