Winter specialists
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
In another blog post, we discussed what many typical insects do to handle or avoid the ravages of winter. For the vast majority of insects, winter is a trying and dangerous time of year – a particularly deep freeze may reach them even deep in soil or under debris, a late spring may cause their fat stores to run out before spring, or a series of freezes and thaws can cause them to get out of “winter mode” only to be caught unprepared by a later blizzard. But some insects brave the cold and relish this season when parasitoids are absent and predators or competitors are scarce. These are among th ..read more
Visit website
Pests in winter
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
With winter approaching, you may wonder if or how pests survive the months of brutal cold and food shortage ahead. Insects and rodents have a variety of strategies for coping with the seasons, but because they have fundamentally different physiology, those strategies are quite different. Collectively, rodents have two options for surviving the winter; hibernate or remain active. Groundhogs are one of the best-known hibernating rodents; in autumn, they fatten themselves up and dig a hibernation burrow, and during hibernation their body temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate all greatly dec ..read more
Visit website
Crash course on spiders
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
Tarantular, my pet Chilean rose tarantula (Grammostola rosea), chowing down on a cockroach. As an illustration of how long spiders can go between meals, this was the most recent meal she accepted, and I offered it to her 16 months ago. She has been turning down food since. PC – Liz Cambron Spiders are a common concern for our clients… but should they be? Spiders are a diverse group, having roughly 48,000 species distributed around the globe (excluding Antarctica). Defining features of the group include eight legs, subchelate (fanged) mouthparts that are usually venomous, a narrow connection be ..read more
Visit website
Springtails – soil doctors or household pests?
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
Springtails have been very abundant this year, with a multitude of calls coming in on springtail infestations. So what are these bizarre little arthropods, what do they do, and what can we do to manage them? First off, let’s highlight the unusual classification of the springtails. Despite having six legs and an exoskeleton, they are considered separate from the insects, and belong to their own class – Collembola. Both the common name and scientific name reference structures on the belly, though they refer to different structures. “Springtail” touches on the furcula, a fork-shaped “tail” that i ..read more
Visit website
What’s in a name (pt III)
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
To finish off my series on names, I wanted to point out that part of the reason scientists often use scientific names rather than common names is that there are simply too many species to give each of them a scientific name and one or more common names. Especially among the species that are too small for the average person to notice and not of tremendous economic importance, scientific names are often all that we have to work with. For example, I have personally worked with Opius dissitus, Lysiphlebus testaceipes, Binodoxys communis, Aphidius ervi, Aphidius colemani, and Praon pequodorum, whic ..read more
Visit website
What’s in a name, part II: Why naming rules matter
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
In our last post about insect names we discussed some of the pros and cons of common and scientific names. In this post, I want to walk through a case study that will illustrate in more detail how common name conventions work and why it can be important to get names right. As promised earlier, I want to discuss the distinction between a water bug and a waterbug. If you recall from that post, a name that follows the formula “descriptor” [space] “name” is an accurate name for the animal, whereas a name that follows the formula “descriptorname” without a space indicates a species that does not ac ..read more
Visit website
Pesticides 101
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
As a pest management company, we routinely work with pesticides. Our clients’ responses to those pesticides range from fear and apprehension that the pesticides will cause further harm to asking us to use our strongest pesticides right out of the gate to make sure the pest problem is solved. This post will be a bit of a long one, but I want to explain how pesticides work, how they are regulated, why we use them, and why using the strongest insecticides is not always the answer to persistent pest problems. What are pesticides and how do they work? A pesticide is any chemical substance that is u ..read more
Visit website
Pollinator Week: Save the bees – but which ones?
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
Ever since colony collapse disorder struck honey bees in the US in 2006, a public education campaign has ensured that nearly everyone is acutely aware of the importance of insect pollinators and their conservation, with honey bees acting as the poster child of the “Save the Bees!” movement. But as is often the case, the story is far more complex than “bees are getting sick – we need more beekeepers to save them.” To understand why the story is more complex, a good starting point would be to discuss the history of honey bees. Honey bees (genus Apis) are a small group of about seven species, inc ..read more
Visit website
The Summer Mosquito Menace
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Angel Quinones
3y ago
Mosquitoes are a common pest in the upper Midwest. Globally, they cause three kinds of damage: nuisance from itchy bites, direct harm from disease transmission, and all the secondary costs that come about from the disease burden (lost productivity, healthcare costs, etc.). Fortunately, a combination of effective pest management, effective health care, and a temperate climate inhospitable to some of the world’s worst disease-vectoring mosquito species have made disease transmission by mosquitoes in the United States a relatively minor concern, but mosquitoes are certainly still a big nuisance ..read more
Visit website
Dicamba Registration Cancellation
Guardian Pest Solutions
by Jamie Kopco
4y ago
While most of our attention is caught up on protests and a deadly pandemic, the EPA has revoked a pesticide registration that has seized the attention of many of our nation’s farmers. Dicamba, an herbicide widely used to protect crops from competition with weeds, has been increasingly relied upon by many farmers. It provided control of many weeds that had developed resistance to glyphosate (a.k.a. RoundUp) – the most widely used herbicide on earth. Furthermore, Monsanto had developed genetically modified strains of many important crops that were resistant to dicamba, allowing the herbicide to ..read more
Visit website

Follow Guardian Pest Solutions on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR