Pest Control Columbia MO keeps unwanted creatures like rodents, insects, and ticks away from your home. By spreading their droppings, these creatures can cause serious health problems such as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, leptospirosis, plague, salmonella, and Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis (LCMV).
Natural forces influence the growth of pest populations. These include climate, natural enemies, food and water supplies, shelter, and the availability of overwintering sites.
The goal of prevention is to reduce the risk of pests so that their numbers do not build up to a point where they cause unacceptable harm. This may be accomplished in conjunction with suppression as part of an integrated pest management program. Prevention involves a combination of tactics, such as modifying environmental conditions, establishing physical barriers, and using chemical controls.
Preventing pests from entering buildings is the most important step in controlling them. It’s important to make sure that doors and windows close tightly and that there are no cracks or holes where pests can enter. In addition, food should be stored in tightly sealed containers, and garbage should be regularly disposed of with a tight-fitting lid. This helps to eliminate odors that attract pests, and it prevents contamination of foods and other items.
Keeping buildings clean also discourages pests. Clutter provides places for pests to hide, and it makes it harder for them to find the food they need. Keep plants and food away from areas where rodents and birds are known to congregate.
Certain pests can carry disease and contribute to health hazards. Mosquitoes, for example, can cause diseases such as West Nile virus and Lyme disease. In addition, some pests, such as rodents and cockroaches, can trigger asthma and other respiratory problems.
In some cases, the presence of pests can affect a building’s desirability. Potential buyers or tenants may be deterred by the sight of a pest infestation, and this can have a negative effect on property values.
There are natural forces that affect all organisms, including pests. For example, climate influences the growth of the plant or animal that the pest is eating and its rate of reproduction. In addition, there are predators, parasites and pathogens that can influence pest populations.
Some methods of control can be used to encourage the growth of enemies of pests, such as planting crops that are attractive to them, or releasing pathogens that will attack and kill them. However, these techniques do not always work and may require some time to be effective.
Suppression
A pest control program focuses on keeping pest numbers below levels that cause unacceptable damage. This is the goal when eradication is not possible or is impractical due to expense, environmental impact, or the risk of disrupting native species that do not harm crops. Suppression tactics vary depending on the type of pest and the damage caused, and can include chemical, biological or mechanical controls.
The success of suppression is largely dependent on accurate pest identification. This is the most important step in any pest control effort. Once the pest is identified, it is then easier and more cost effective to implement management strategies that will reduce pest numbers to acceptable levels.
Pest populations thrive only as long as their food or shelter is available. The availability of these resources can be influenced by landscape features such as mountains, rivers and lakes that limit the pest’s movement or agroecosystem features such as fencerows or field boundaries that restrict overwintering sites. Weather conditions also influence pest populations directly or indirectly. For example, cold temperatures and rain or freezing and drought affect plant-eating pests by suppressing growth of their host plants.
Predator and parasite populations also influence pests by eating or attacking them or by interfering with their life cycles. Some mammals, reptiles and fish feed on pests or eat their eggs or larvae. In addition, fungi and bacteria that cause disease in the host plant may interfere with pest reproduction.
It is important to monitor pest populations through surveys or scouting programs to ensure that they are not damaging crops and that management methods are working. This information should be used to set action thresholds, determine action times, and determine the effectiveness of prevention and suppression methods.
Integrated pest management (IPM) includes the use of prevention, suppression and treatment. IPM strategies are designed to minimize the use of chemicals. This is accomplished by monitoring the pest population and adjusting the application of controls to the level needed to achieve desired results while considering health, the environment and economic feasibility.
Proper IPM practices include using resistant varieties of plants, wood, and materials to prevent the buildup of pests. These strategies are often less expensive and more environmentally sound than conventional approaches.
Eradication
In the pest control arena, eradication refers to eliminating an invasive species from a geographic area or habitat. Unlike prevention and suppression, which seek to keep an insect population below an economic injury level, eradication involves taking out the entire population of the pest. In many cases, eradication is more expensive than suppression and is generally only possible when the infestation has reached a large size.
Eradication is a rare goal in outdoor pest situations, where the more common strategies are prevention and suppression. However, it is a more realistic objective in enclosed areas such as dwellings, schools, office buildings and other indoor spaces. In those instances, a pest must be completely eliminated to avoid any future recurrences, a goal that is often easier than in the open outdoors.
A number of factors influence the success or failure of an eradication campaign. The likelihood of success increased with the size of the infested area at the start of a campaign, and was also greater when the eradication effort began within 11 months of the pest being first noticed. The probability of eradication was also higher for campaigns that targeted plants that were introduced as ornamental or escaped from cultivation, and for those targeting (semi)-natural habitats rather than man-made ones.
The likelihood of eradication also depended on the degree to which human intervention had been attempted, with campaigns that relied solely on sanitary measures being less successful than those that included cultural and biological control actions as well. The authors of this paper suggest that a global database of management/eradication experiences could provide useful information to pest managers in the development of eradication policies. They also recommend that molecular genetic techniques be used to investigate the meta-population dynamics of a target species and to identify sources for eradication. This would help to refine strategic policy in eradication campaigns by identifying source populations that could be targeted for eradication, and also facilitate adaptive management in the face of failure. The authors thank Richard Baker, Andrea Battisti, Marc Kenis and Nico van Opstal for helpful comments on previous drafts of this article and one anonymous reviewer for technical assistance.
Treatment
In outdoor situations, eradication is a rare goal and one that must be achieved through prevention and suppression. However, eradication is more easily accomplished in enclosed environments such as hospitals, schools, office buildings, and food processing plants.
The simplest method of control is to spray the pests directly with chemical insecticides. This is done by identifying the pests that are present and selecting an appropriate product to eliminate them. It is important that only a trained and licensed pest control professional should handle or apply any pesticides. Over-spraying can cause pesticide resistance and is harmful to people and pets.
Physical pest control includes barriers and traps to stop pests from entering a building or area. These can include fly screens for windows, ensuring rubbish is always tightly closed and sealed, using steel wool to fill gaps under doors, and putting a cover over drains. It is also important to reduce the amount of clutter around a property that can provide hiding places for pests.
A more scientific approach to pest control involves introducing natural enemies of pests. These can be predators, parasites, or herbivores that are bred in the laboratory and released to prey on the pests. The advantage of this type of control is that it is not disruptive to the natural balance of the ecosystem and is not usually harmful to people or pets.
Other methods of biological pest control include the use of pheromones (the chemicals that an insect produces to communicate with other insects in its species), the introduction of natural enemies that occur in the environment, or applying juvenile hormones to prevent adults from maturing into reproducing adults. These techniques help to reduce the need for chemical pesticides.
If you’ve tried some preventive measures and the problem persists, it may be time to call in a pesticide treatment. These are often more expensive than other types of pest control but can be very effective and a much quicker solution to the problem. Before the treatment is applied it is a good idea to mop any floors and avoid hard scrubbing the areas that will be treated, such as the skirting and kick boards at the wall edges. This allows the treatment to bind to the surface and be more effective.