Pest Control Services
RODENTS are also significant vectors of disease. The black rat, with the fleas that it carries, plays a primary role in spreading the bacterium Yersinia pestis responsible for bubonic plague and carries the organisms responsible for typhus, Weil's disease, toxoplasmosis and trichinosis. A number of rodents carry hantaviruses, including the Puumala, Dobrava and Saaremaa viruses, which can infect humans. Rodents also help to transmit diseases including babesiosis, cutaneous leishmaniasis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, Lyme disease, Omsk hemorrhagic fever, Powassan virus, rickettsialpox, relapsing fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and West Nile virus.
TERMITES are among the most successful groups of infects on Earth, colonizing most landmasses expect for Antarctica. Their colonies range in size from a couple of hundred individuals to enormous societies with several million individuals. Termites’ queens have the longest lifespan of any insect in the world, with some queens living up to 50 years. Owing to their wood-eating habits, many termite species can do great damage to unprotected buildings and other wooden structures. Their habit of remaining concealed often results in their in their presence being undetected until the timbers are severely damaged, leaving a thin layer of a wall that protects them from the environment. The damage caused by termites costs the southwestern United States approximately $1.5 billion each year in wood structure damage, but the true damage worldwide cannot be determined.
COCKROACHES are generalized insects, with few special adaptations, and may be among the most primitive living neopteran insects. They have a relatively small head and a board, flattened body, and most species are reddish-brown to dark brown. Cockroaches are generally omnivorous; the American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana), for example, feeds on a great variety of foodstuffs including bread, fruit, leather, starch in book bindings, paper, glue, skin flakes, hair, dead insects and soiled clothing. They can passively transport pathogenic microbes on their body surfaces, particularly in environments such as hospitals. Cockroaches are linked with allergic reactions in humans. One of the proteins that triggers allergic reactions in tropomyosin. These allergens are also linked with asthma.
SILVERFISH are a cosmopolitan species, found in Africa, the Americas, Australia, Eurasia, and other parts of the Pacific. They inhibit moist areas, requiring a relative humidity between 75% and 95%. In urban areas, they can be found in attics, basements, bathtubs, sinks, kitchens, and showers. Silverfish consume matter that contains polysaccharides, such as starches and dextrin in adhesives. These include book bindings, carpet, clothing, coffee, dandruff, glue, hair, some paints, paper, photos, plaster, and sugar. Silverfish can also cause damage to tapestries. Other substances they may eat include cotton, dead insects, linen, silk, or even its own exuvia (moulted exoskeleton). During famine, a silverfish may even attack leather ware and synthetic fabrics. Silverfish can live for a year or more without eating.
The term WOODBORING BEETLE encompasses many species and families of beetles whose larval or adult forms eat and destroy wood (i.e., are xylophagous). In the woodworking industry, larval stages of some are sometimes referred to as woodworms. The three most speciose families of woodboring beetles and longhorn beetles, bark beetles and weevils, and metallic flat-headed borers. Woodboring beetles are commonly detected a few years after new construction. The lumber supply may have contained wood infected with beetle eggs or larvae, and since beetle life cycles can be one or more years, several years may pass before the presence of beetles becomes noticeable.
MOSQUITOES are small, midge-like flies which compromise the family Culicidae. Females of most species are ectoparasites, whose tube-like mouthparts (called a proboscis) pierce the hosts' skin to costume blood. Like all flies, mosquitoes go through four stages in their lifecycles: egg, larva, pupa, and adult orimago. In most species, adult female lay their eggs in stagnant water; some lay eggs near water's edge; others attach their eggs to aquatic plants. Viral diseases, such as yellow fever, dengue fever, and chikungunya, transmitted mostly by Aedes aegypti. Dengue fever is the most common cause of fever in travelers returning from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and South Central Asia. This disease is spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes and cannot be spread person to person.
BED BUGS are parasitic insects of the cimicid family that feeds exclusively on blood. Cimex lectularius, the common bed bug is the best known, as it prefers to feed on human blood. A number of adverse health effects may result from bed bug bites, including skin rashes, psychological effects, and allergic symptoms. They are not known to transmit any pathogens as disease vectors. Certain signs and symptoms suggest the presence of bed bugs; finding the insects confirms the diagnosis.
HOUSE FLIES are capable of carrying over 100 pathogens, such as those causing typhoid, cholera, salmonellosis, bacillary dysentery, tuber culosis, anthrax, opthalmia, and parasitic worms. Some strains have become immune to most common insecticides.House flies feed on liquid or semi-liquid substances beside solid material which has been soften by saliva or vomit. Because of their large intake of food, they deposit feces constantly, one of the factors that make the insect a dangerous carrier of pathogens. Although they are domestic flies, usually confined to human habitations, they can fly for several miles from the breeding place. They can active only in daytime, and rest at night, e.g., at the corners of rooms, ceiling hangings, cellars, and barns, where they can survive the coldest winters by hibernation, and when spring arrives, adult flies are seen only a few days after the first thaw. Mechanical transmission of organisms on its hairs, mouthparts, vomitus and feces.
Cysts of protozoa e.g. Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia and eggs of helminths, e.g., Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Hymenolepis nana, Enterobius vermicularis.
Typhoid, cholera, dysentery, pyogenic cocci, etc. House flies have been demonstrated to be vectors of Campylobacter and E.coli. House flies can be monitored for bacterial pathogens using filter paper spot cards and PCR
Poliomyelitis, viral hepatitis (A & E)