Pests are unwanted organisms that damage food or property. They may also spread disease. Contact Pest Control Clearwater now!
Monitoring a crop, landscape, or building for pests helps you determine whether their numbers are high enough to warrant control. Correct identification enables you to select the best management methods.
Prevention and suppression are usually the goals in outdoor pest situations. Eradication is possible in some circumstances, such as when a foreign pest threatens food safety.
Prevention
Prevention is a strategy for stopping pests before they cause problems. It’s less expensive and more environmentally friendly than control methods that come after a pest infestation is already underway. Ideally, prevention focuses on changing environmental or cultural practices that make an area unfriendly to unwanted organisms. It can also focus on limiting the availability of food, water or shelter to pests.
For example, pests can be prevented from gaining access to homes by installing screens on doors and windows and keeping them closed; washing trash regularly and avoiding leaving open or empty containers outside the home; and making sure all appliances, pipes and vents are tightly sealed. In commercial settings, preventive strategies can include inspecting incoming shipments for pests; establishing cleaning and maintenance routines that keep spaces clean and free of moisture (to deter pests such as flies, ants and rodents); and creating sanitary boundaries on floors through the organized layout of shelving and cabinets.
Many pests are able to reproduce only as long as they have a suitable food source and adequate water. Weather conditions can limit pest populations by limiting the availability of food or water, as well as by directly killing or suppressing them through freezing temperatures or rain storms. Topographic features, such as mountains and large bodies of water, can restrict the movement of pests.
Many natural controls limit pest infestations, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish that feed on pests or their eggs, as well as predatory insects and pathogens that can injure or kill them. Biological and chemical control tactics can also reduce pest population sizes, such as by using beneficial insects, plants and microbes to replace or supplement the use of pesticides; planting crops that are less attractive to pests; or by altering environmental factors, such as soil health, nutrient levels, available water and lighting.
Suppression
Pest control aims to reduce pest numbers to below the level that would cause unacceptable damage. Generally, this involves causing as little harm to the environment and non-target organisms as possible while killing or controlling the target species. This may include modifying the growing environment (e.g., creating barriers between the crop and pests), introducing predators or parasites that kill or limit the growth of the pests, or using chemicals that kill the pests or their eggs.
Some pests have a zero tolerance threshold and cannot be present at all in a food establishment due to the health, environmental and economic problems they cause. Eradication is the goal of pest control in these situations.
Many natural forces affect pest populations, including weather conditions, the number of food sources, the availability of shelter, and the presence of enemies. Consequently, the best way to manage a pest population is by preventing it from reaching damaging or intolerable levels in the first place, which is why prevention is so important.
Scouting and monitoring are the keys to making good threshold-based decisions about scouting and treatment. Knowing exactly what type of pest you are dealing with and studying its environment carefully is also key to developing a successful treatment plan. This will help you tailor your physical or chemical interventions to the specific pest, which will result in less off-target impacts and less disruption to the environment.
Some of these natural enemies of pests, such as the parasites, predators, and pathogens mentioned above, are often used in biological control programs to manage insect, weed, and plant-parasitic nematode pests. Other natural enemies of pests, such as pheromones and juvenile hormones, are used to augment the effects of biological controls.
Biological Control
Biological control is the use of natural enemies (parasites, pathogens and predators) to suppress pest insects, mites and plant diseases. It is a useful tool for managing exotic pest species because they are usually introduced without their native natural enemies. It can also be used to manage pests that have developed resistance to chemical pesticides.
PPQ is committed to safe and responsible use of biological control and requires monitoring and evaluation as integral parts of all implementation projects. The success of biological control depends on the ability of the agents to establish, maintain and expand their populations in the field and on the habitat available for them. The use of indiscriminate weed management practices and some pesticides destroys natural enemy habitat, which negatively impacts biological control. PPQ recommends that growers/growers use less persistent pesticides that will not interfere with the growth and establishment of natural enemies.
A few biological controls are commercially available and include Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), entomopathogenic nematodes, fungi, protozoa, and virus-infected plants. Most parasitoids and predators that are released to suppress pests have a specific host range; therefore, it is critical to identify the pest species correctly when selecting a beneficial organism for release.
Biological control is more complex than using chemical pesticides. Importation, augmentation and conservation of natural enemies are the three general approaches to biological control. Importation biological control involves introducing natural enemies from the pest’s country of origin to reestablish predator-prey relationships. Augmentative biological control is the introduction of small numbers of natural enemies to supplement existing populations with the expectation that they will rapidly suppress pests. Inundative biological control is the release of large numbers of natural enemies in order to quickly overwhelm and disrupt a pest population.
Mechanical or Physical Controls
The growing interest in health and environment issues has caused many gardeners to search for non-chemical alternatives to pesticides. Fortunately, there are many of these. These fall into the category of mechanical or physical controls and include a wide range of practices such as digging, cutting, smothering, tillage, fire, grazing and construction of barriers to prevent weeds from sprouting (Figure 2). These methods directly impact or block pest populations or make the environment unsuitable for them. They may be used singly or in combination and include traps for rodents, harrowing, tilling, burning, chopping, smothering and mowing. These techniques are most often used in weed control.
Natural forces that influence pest population levels include climate, natural enemies, natural barriers and the availability of food, water, shelter and other resources. It is important to be aware of how these factors affect pest populations and use them to your advantage.
Scouting, monitoring and identifying pests are very important aspects of any IPM program. These actions help to determine whether a pest can be tolerated, requires control or needs to be eradicated. Incorrect identification can lead to a poor treatment and off-target damage.
Regulatory controls are employed when pest problems become so serious that they cannot be controlled using cultural or biological means. They can be imposed by State or Federal agencies and include quarantines, eradication and destruction of the pests. These are usually employed for pests that endanger human health, or cause extensive or widespread damage to agricultural crops, livestock, forests and ornamental plants. They also include programs for preventing the introduction of certain pests from other areas and for treating goods entering or leaving a State to destroy any identified pests.
IPM
An IPM program uses preventive practices to reduce the number of pests and their damage before they become a serious problem. These may include removing food or water from sources pests like to eat, planting resistant varieties, changing cultural practices, or sealing areas where pests enter buildings (weatherization). UC research since the 1940’s has been instrumental in developing and fine-tuning IPM.
IPM programs start with a problem assessment to determine if there is a pest infestation and to identify the scope of it. Once the problem is understood, monitoring and identification of the pests occur. This allows for an action threshold to be set that guides decisions regarding control measures. Usually, less risky controls are tried first such as pheromones or physical controls like trapping and weeding. If these methods do not work or if more pests are detected, then more robust control measures are used. These can include chemical spraying, but always with the least amount of exposure to humans and other organisms.
Biological controls are useful in IPM because they are usually targeted to the specific insect species that needs controlling. For example, the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis produces a toxin that destroys the midgut of caterpillars without harming people or pets. There are over 400 different strains that can be used to target many insect species in various ways.
The key to IPM is regular, consistent monitoring of the pest population and its impacts. This can be done with inspections or by using tools like sticky traps, pheromone strips, and pest sighting logs. UC IPM guidelines offer specific information on monitoring for most major crops. UC Cooperative Extension staff and IPM Advisors provide training and support to implement IPM.