Pest control | Britannica (original) (raw)

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Assorted References

• major reference
  • 
    In origins of agriculture: Beginnings of pest control
    Wherever agriculture has been practiced, pests have attacked, destroying part or even all of the crop. In modern usage, the term pest includes animals (mostly insects), fungi, plants, bacteria, and viruses. Human efforts to control pests have a long history. Even in Neolithic…
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• agricultural technology
  • 
    In agricultural technology: Crop protection
    …and predators that destroy insect pests.
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  • 
    In agricultural technology: Chemicals
    Use of heptachlor (no longer recommended) to control alfalfa weevil led to soil contamination and uptake by hay; dairy cows that ate the hay produced milk containing heptachlor.
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effects on

agriculture

• beekeeping
  • 
    In beekeeping: Pests
    The greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, is a lepidopterous insect that, in its larval stage, destroys combs. It does not attack adult bees but may begin destruction of combs of a weak colony long before the bees are gone. It can also destroy stored…
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• cotton
  • 
    In cotton: Pests and diseases
    Cotton is attacked by several hundred species of insects, including such harmful species as the boll weevil, pink bollworm, cotton leafworm, cotton fleahopper, cotton aphid, rapid plant bug, conchuela, southern green stinkbug, spider mites (red spiders), grasshoppers
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• forestry
  • 
    In forestry: Insect and disease control
    The normal population levels of pest organisms result in limited reduction in tree growth or the total destruction of only a small number of trees in the forest. The losses are generally accepted by foresters as unavoidable and are tolerated as long as the annual destruction does not seriously affect…
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• fruit farming
  • 
    In fruit farming: Pest control and preservation
    In many fruit enterprises, pest control is the most expensive and time-consuming growing practice. Where the concentration of fruit farms in an area warrants it, individual efforts are complemented by legislative measures including quarantine regulations to force removal of pest-laden, unattended…
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• gardening
  • 
    In gardening: Control of pests and diseases
    Damage to plants is most often caused by pests such as insects, mites, eelworms, and other small creatures but may also be caused by mammals such as deer, rabbits, and mice. Damage by disease is that caused by fungi, bacteria, and viruses.
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• organic farming
  • 
    In organic farming: Pest control
    Organic pesticides are derived from naturally occurring sources. These include living organisms such as the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, which is used to control caterpillar pests, or plant derivatives such as pyrethrins (from the dried flower heads of Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium) or neem oil (from…
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• sugarcane
  • 
    In sugarcane: Pests
    Sugarcane is attacked and damaged by various insect pests that bore into and feed on the different parts of the plant. Control measures include biological control by parasites or predators, chemical control by insecticides, and the introduction of resistant cane varieties.
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• tea
  • 
    In tea plant: Pests and diseases
    The tea plant is subject to attack from at least 150 insect species and 380 fungal diseases, several of which can cause heavy crop losses. These problems are particularly acute in the plant’s native range. In northeastern India, for example, some 125…
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• tobacco
  • 
    In tobacco: Diseases and pests
    Common diseases and pests are black root rot, Fusarium wilt, tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), bacterial leaf spot, downy mildew, black shank, broomrape, and witchweed. These may be controlled by sanitation, crop rotation,
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• vegetable farming
  • In vegetable farming: Disease and insect control
    The production of satisfactory crops requires rigorous disease- and insect-control measures. Crop yield may be lowered by disease or insect attack, and when plants are attacked at an early stage of growth the entire crop may be lost. Reduction in the quality of…
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human populations

• malaria
  • 
    In malaria: Vaccines and other forms of prevention
    The most comprehensive method of prevention is to eliminate the breeding places of Anopheles mosquitoes by draining and filling marshes, swamps, stagnant pools, and other large or small bodies of standing freshwater. Insecticides have proved potent in controlling mosquito populations in affected areas.
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• pappataci fever
  • In pappataci fever
    …are difficult to discover, rendering larvicidal control impractical. The bloodsucking females feed only from sunset to sunrise and only at ground level, so that sleeping above the ground floor provides moderately good protection. Ordinary mosquito netting and screening are useless, because unfed female flies can pass through their 18-mesh squares.…
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• yellow fever
  • 
    In yellow fever: Diagnosis, treatment, and control
    In the early stages of yellow fever, its symptoms are similar to those of other tropical fevers such as malaria, leptospirosis, or dengue. Diagnosis is usually established by blood tests showing the presence of antibodies to the virus and by the patient’s history of…
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use of

entomological study

• In entomology
  …of methods for controlling insect pests. Some insects are perceived as threats to humans, both as agents of crop destruction and as disseminators of disease. Methods of integrating pest management, which combine chemical, biological, cultural, and sanitation strategies, have been devised to control the damage done by insects to agricultural…
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• spiders

  • 
    In spider: Importance
    Spiders have been used to control insects in apple orchards in Israel and rice fields in China. Large numbers of spiders have also been observed feeding on insects in South American rice fields and in fields of various North American crops. Modern pest-management strategies emphasize the use of insecticides that…
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• tachinid flies

  • 
    In tachinid fly
    …of great importance in the control of destructive insects, particularly caterpillars and beetle larvae. For this reason several species have been used in the biological control of pests. For example, the sugarcane beetle borer population in Hawaii has been reduced by the tachinid Ceromasia sphenophori from New Guinea; the coconut
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• neonicotinoids

  • 
    In neonicotinoid
    …used especially in agriculture to control destructive pests such as aphids and mites. Since their introduction in the late 1980s, the chemicals have become the most widely used pesticides in the world. The prophylactic use of neonicotinoids has had a negative impact on a broad range of nontarget organisms, including…
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• reptiles

  • 
    In reptile: Importance
    …to any vertebrate that provides pest control. Nonetheless, many lizards control insect pests in homes and gardens; snakes are major predators of rodents, and the importance of rodent control has been demonstrated repeatedly when populations of rodent-eating snakes are decimated by snake harvesting for the leather trade. The absence of…
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• resistant plant species

  • 
    In plant breeding: Increase of yield
    …the only practical method of pest control. Perhaps the most important feature of resistant varieties is the stabilizing effect they have on production and hence on steady food supplies. Varieties tolerant to drought, heat, or cold provide the same benefit.
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• ultrasonics

  • In ultrasonics
    …to the manufacture of “pest controllers” that emit loud sounds in that frequency range to drive the pests away, but they do not appear to work as advertised.
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use on

• mosquitoes
  • 
    In Aedes: Role in disease transmission
    In 2019 researchers reported having nearly eradicated A. albopictus on two islands in Guangzhou, China. Populations of the species dropped by 94 percent between 2016 and 2019 following the introduction into the wild of female mosquitoes that had been sterilized by radiation in a laboratory and males that had been…
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• slugs
  • 
    In gastropod: Locomotion
    …the most effective methods of controlling slugs: spreading enough ashes in slug-infested areas causes exhaustion and death of the animals through the overproduction of slime.
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