Pest Control O’fallon MO is the action taken to prevent and eradicate undesirable pests. Pests can be controlled using natural enemies (parasites, predators, or pathogens) and chemical methods.
Routine pest control helps preserve property values and safety. It can also reduce health risks by eliminating disease-causing pathogens and allergens. Pests are usually kept at bay by natural enemies and barriers like mountains or large bodies of water.
Prevention is an ongoing strategy that involves regularly inspecting and treating a property to reduce the risk of pest infestation. This approach reduces costs by reducing the need for repair and removal, as well as preserving property values by maintaining the quality of the home or workplace.
Routine inspections can identify areas that are vulnerable to pest invasions, like entry points, nesting sites and food sources. A preventive approach can also entail caulking cracks and crevices, modifying the landscape to limit moisture accumulation, and keeping garbage cans tightly sealed. In some cases, this may also involve building barriers to pests, such as installing bird netting or rodent traps around the house.
Preventive pest control can also help protect human health and safety by limiting exposure to pathogens and allergens. Many pests carry diseases that can pose a threat to human beings, from fungi that cause mildew and mould to bacteria that cause food poisoning or infections in people or pets. In addition, pests can leave faeces or saliva on surfaces that can cause disease and aggravate allergies in humans and animals.
A routine pest control plan can also be beneficial for the environment. Besides the direct harm caused by pests, such as damage to property and loss of crops, they can disturb or alter the ecosystem by eating natural resources and disrupting their normal cycles. Some pests have a significant negative impact on the environment, particularly in enclosed spaces such as dwellings; retail or food preparation environments; and hospitals.
Eradication is usually not the goal in outdoor pest control situations, but it is an option for indoor environments where specific pests are a problem, such as cockroaches or ants. It is important to remember that even if a pest population is reduced to an acceptable level, it may still be present in the environment and could cause problems at some time in the future.
Suppression
The goal of suppression is to reduce the pest population below a level that will cause unacceptable damage, whether for aesthetic, health or economic reasons. This is a common approach to managing pests in homes and some industrial settings. It is especially useful for pests that are difficult to prevent from entering or growing in a building or facility. For example, preventing rodents from entering residential buildings will help preserve property values and prevent disease to humans living in the home.
The primary tools of suppression are cultural and physical controls. Cultural controls include making the environment unattractive to the pest by removing food, water or shelter. This can be done by making sure there is a proper balance between vegetation and cropping areas, keeping weeds under control to deprive the pest of its habitat, or modifying irrigation schedules to avoid long periods of high humidity that favor disease pathogens.
Another method of controlling the pest is to introduce natural enemies to the area. This is often referred to as biological control. Examples of these natural enemies are predators, parasitoids and pathogens. These can be conserved and released, or they can be mass-reared, then introduced in an attempt to quickly raise their numbers so that they can effectively control the pest. The success of this method is dependent on the biology of the pest, the availability of appropriate natural enemies in the local ecosystem and a careful consideration of the potential for unintended consequences, such as negative impacts on native species which are not pests or other natural enemies of the target pest.
Vertebrate pests are also controlled with the use of traps and bait stations. These include rats and mice, as well as birds that may carry diseases and interfere with horticultural production.
Eradication
An eradication strategy involves eliminating a pest to the point that recolonization is unlikely. Eradication requires a global effort, and successful eradication depends on a number of factors. Nonhuman hosts may be overlooked (as in the case of yellow fever), drugs or insecticides may fail due to resistance (as with guinea worm and malaria), or human populations may become less vigilant about vaccination (as in the case of poliomyelitis). A thorough cost-benefit analysis of eradication programs must project future infections and vaccination costs, attach values to them and discount them in order to get an accurate picture of the benefits of eradication.
A parasitic nematode is an example of a beneficial organism that can be used in pest control. The microscopic worms infect pest insects with toxic bacteria, which kill them and break them down into nutrients that are absorbed by the nematode. Nematodes are a fast-acting, environmentally friendly alternative to chemical pesticides.
A pest is any plant, animal, or organism that disturbs or damages property. In agriculture, pests are organisms that threaten or damage crops. They can also include disease-causing agents and organisms that contaminate food or water supplies. In households and urban environments, pests are rodents, birds and insects that contaminate or spoil food, water or possessions. They are often referred to as vermin and are the source of many diseases, such as tetanus, salmonella and rabies. They also can cause structural damage, such as chewed wires and insulation. Pests can be controlled by exclusion, quarantine, repulsion and physical removal. Pesticides are chemicals that kill or control pests, regulate growth, or remove foliage. They can be natural or synthetic. A good pesticide should work quickly, be environmentally friendly and cost-effective.
Mechanical or Physical Controls
When modern pesticides first became available, they were used extensively. But overuse caused some pests to become resistant to the chemicals. Scientists began to develop new methods that focused on controlling the population rather than eliminating it. The approach became known as integrated pest management (IPM). IPM uses a combination of different control tactics — mechanical, cultural, biological, and chemical — to keep the pest population below acceptable levels. This method minimizes disruption of living organisms and nonliving surroundings at the treatment site.
Accurate identification of pests and hosts is the first step in IPM. It allows you to determine basic information about the pest, such as its life cycle and time of greatest vulnerability. It also helps you estimate pest numbers accurately so that action is taken only when necessary.
Physical or mechanical controls include barriers and other exclusion techniques that create boundaries that pests can’t or won’t cross. These may be physical walls or devices, such as raccoon-proof garbage containers and slug traps, that block pest access to food sources. They can also be sprays that repel or kill pests or other substances that poison them, such as nematodes and fungi.
Other physical controls include heating or steaming soils, which destroys weed seeds and pathogens by raising their temperatures. This technique is sometimes called soil solarization.
Frightening is another form of IPM. It involves attempting to scare pests away by using light, sound, or movement. Examples of frightening devices include reflective objects, noise makers, human or predator effigies, lights, and pyrotechnics. The effectiveness of frightening methods varies, however, and you must be careful not to desensitize pests to the stimuli. Some plants are also susceptible to being desensitized by a frightening device, such as a scarecrow, that is moved too frequently.
Natural Forces
Natural forces affect all organisms, including pests. They can help or hinder pest control, depending on the situation. Some of these forces include climate, natural enemies, natural barriers, and availability of food and shelter.
Predatory species, nematodes, bacteria, and parasitic wasps can all reduce pest populations by attacking and killing them or by competing with them for food. Many plants, such as fern-leaf yarrow (Achillea filipendulina), are naturally insect resistant and can be planted in garden or landscape areas to provide food for predators of insects that damage crops.
Some vertebrates, such as birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and mammals, feed on or kill pests and help control their numbers. Plants, such as yarrow and carrot tops, can also be used to attract these predators and parasites.
When the population of a pest drops to an unacceptably high level, other types of control methods can be applied. These methods are usually less damaging to the environment, and they may be more economical than chemical controls.
The introduction of natural enemy species to control a pest is called classical biological control. This process is usually a lengthy and costly one, because the natural enemy species must be found, tested, quarantined and reared before it can be mass-produced for release. Often the natural enemy is foreign in origin, and it is introduced to control an invasive pest. Examples of this include decapitating flies against red imported fire ants, and several species of parasitoids against alligator weed.
The monitoring of insect, mollusk and vertebrate pests must be continued in order to determine when their numbers have reached threshold levels. This is a critical part of an integrated pest management program. The scouting for natural enemies must be done regularly as well, so that they can be released at the right time to have a significant impact on the pest population.
