WEB EXCLUSIVE: Pest Don’t Get Valentines – But They Breed Like Crazy Anyway

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February 6, 2007

“Valentine’s Day is a reminder of how important love is for everyone, parents, children, couples of every kind,” says Leonard Douglen, the executive director of the New Jersey Pest Management Association.”But that does apply to the billions of insect and rodent pests which whom we share this world.”

In fact, most insect parents never even stick around to see their children, says Douglen. “A single female German cockroach, in a year’s time, can have up to 400,000 descendents and, since she just lays eggs and leaves, they are on their own from the moment they are born.” This species produces more eggs than other cockroach species and, depending on factors such as humidity and temperature, a German cockroach can grow from egg to adult in as few as 36 days, though it can take as long as 60 days.

Other cockroach species include American, Brown-banded, Oriental, Asian and Australian. “The are all too busy breeding to send a Valentine’s card,” says Douglen, “and that’s why pest management professionals are on the job all year long.”

Homeowners are often astonished to discover they are sharing their house with a colony of termites, but New Jersey’s pest experts estimate that the number of infestations may be as high as two or three out of every five houses statewide. “There’s no love lost between homeowners and termites,” says Douglen. “They are responsible for more damage than fires and floods combined.”

Termites are social insects, but it is only the queen who gets all the love in the colony. She is responsible for producing all the others, although there can also be supplementary queens. One study cited in the “Handbook of Pest Control” reported that a queen can lay six eggs a minute which adds up to 360 eggs an hours, 8,460 a day, and 3,153,00 at year!

In the termite world, the male reproductive is high in the caste system, followed by the worker and soldier termites. “Sometime in the early spring on the first warm day when conditions are just right, termite colonies will send forth hundreds of thousands of alates or winged reproductives whose job it is to find mates and start new colonies,” says Douglen.

When spring arrives next month, New Jersey will be home to several millions, if not billions, of new cockroaches, termites, fleas, flies, wasps, spiders, bedbugs, and other insect pest species. Romance has nothing to do with it as all insect pest species are driven to reproduce in huge numbers. Warm weather is nature’s trigger.

Rats can breed prodigiously if the circumstances are right and they can do so throughout the year so long as they have access to food and water. “Rats are highly adaptive,” says Douglen. “If they were not primarily nocturnal animals, we would be amazed to discover how many of them exist around us at all times. Pest control professionals work around the year putting out bait traps and using a variety of techniques to exterminate both rats and mice.”

Romance has nothing to do with productivity. The Brown or Norway rat can reach sexual maturity in two months and this is important because the average life span of rats about six months, though they can live longer. Once mature, they can breed every month of the year. A litter of Norway rats can be as few as six or as many as twenty. Gestation averages about twenty-five days and a female rat can be impregnated again within a few hours of giving birth.

House mice are extremely prolific. They are mature around 35 days after birth. The average litter size is six and the female will suckle them for about a month. Thus, under good conditions, a female mouse can have litters approximately every forty to fifty days.

In general, mice live for fifteen to eighteen months.

“For humans, love is an important component of life, but for insect and rodent species it simply does not exist,” said Douglen. “Indeed, humans from our earliest beginnings have understood the threat these pest species pose as they are routinely responsible for major disease outbreaks. In addition, they also are famous worldwide for destroying tons of food crops every year.

The New Jersey Pest Management Association was founded in 1941 and has been the leader in research and education to benefit its member firms. It is affiliated with the National Pest Management Association and members belong to both organizations.

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