Do things seem really dry where you are? How much should you water your lawn or irrigate your crops? There are a number of commercial products out there that can help you determine this, but one simple method that is available for free is the Lawn and Garden Moisture Index, a daily map put out by the Alabama State Climatologist based on estimated rainfall from radar. This map tells you whether your lawn and garden have enough moisture or if more needs to be added. This is one of a number of useful products available on AgroClimate.org, a website developed by the Southeast Climate Consortium, a group of eight universities around the Southeast.
This map shows the areas with surplus water in greens (no need to water or irrigate there) and areas with a water deficit in oranges and reds. The darkest red areas are almost 2 inches short of water, including a large portion of Georgia. If this situation continues, then the Drought Monitor is likely to add D0, abnormally dry conditions, to the next weekly Drought Monitor map. Areas with deficits of an inch or more should be irrigated to help alleviate the dry conditions and keep lawns and gardens healthy.
Carpenter ants are so-called because of their habit of chewing wood to create nest sites. They do not eat wood, like termites, but they excavate it with their strong, saw-like jaws to create random galleries where they nest. Carpenter ants are also a nuisance because of their abundance and large size. Finding Nests Is Key to Eliminating Carpenter Ants
From the Georgia Mosquito Control Association newsletter – DIDEEBYCHA
In 2001, the CDC and the Pan American Health Organization jointly released a document entitled Preparedness and Response for Chikungunya Virus Introduction in the Americas. In late 2013, Chikungunya was found for the first time on islands in the Caribbean, where it has persisted and continued to spread.
Chikungunya fever is an emerging, mosquito-borne disease caused by the Chikungunya virus. It is transmitted predominantly by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, the same species involved in the transmission of dengue. Chikungunya is an RNA virus that belongs to the Alphavirus genus in the family Togaviridae. The name chikungunya derives from a word in Makonde and roughly means “that which bends,” describing the stooped appearance of persons suffering with the characteristic painful arthralgia.
Epidemics of fever, rash, and arthritis resembling CHIK were reported as early as the 1770s. However, the virus was not isolated from human serum and mosquitoes until an epidemic in Tanzania in 1952−1953. Subsequent outbreaks occurred in Africa and Asia, many of them affecting small or rural communities.
In Asia in the 1960s, CHIKV strains were isolated during large urban outbreaks in Bangkok, Thailand. These large outbreaks also occurred in Calcutta and Vellore, India, during the 1960s and 1970s. After the initial identification of CHIKV, sporadic outbreaks continued to occur, but little activity was reported after the mid-1980s. In 2004, however, an outbreak originating on the coast of Kenya subsequently spread to Comoros, La Réunion, and several other Indian Ocean islands in the following two years.
From the spring of 2004 to the summer of 2006, an estimated 500,000 cases had occurred. Since 2004, Chikungunya virus had been causing large epidemics of chikungunya fever, with considerable morbidity and suffering. The epidemics had crossed international borders and seas, and the virus had been introduced into at least 19 countries by travelers returning from affected areas. Because the virus had been introduced into geographic locations where the appropriate vectors are endemic, it was thought likely that the disease would establish itself in new areas of Europe and the Americas.
What about Georgia? There certainly is a risk of introduction and spread; there is no immunity and appropriate vectors and hosts exist here. McTighe and Vaidyanathan (2012. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, Vol. 12:867-871) tested the vector competency of Virginia and Georgia strains of Ae albopictus for CHIK virus and determined that they were all highly competent vectors of this virus. In their conclusions these last authors stated, “Only early and specific detection of human cases coordinated with vector control can reduce the risk of local transmission of CHIKV in the US.”
Human Disease Symptoms:
High fever (103-104 F)
Rash
Severe incapacitating arthritis/arthralgia.
o Generalized
o Usually acute (several days to several weeks, though 20% of individuals have long-term joint complaints)
Hemorrhagic manifestations have been reported (rare)
Rarely if ever fatal – may cause encephalitis
These symptoms appear on average 4 to 7 days (but can range from 1 to 12 days) after being bitten by an infected Aedes mosquito. Infected individuals develop a high titer viremia and can infect mosquitoes during this time period.
Sharon Dowdy is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Termites feeding on pieces of wood in garden soil. Image credit: Sharon Dowdy
Those who tackle termites may think the tiny insects spend their days eating wood. But a University of Georgia entomologist says 80 percent of the time they do absolutely nothing.
“As a group, they always look busy. But as individuals, only a few of them actually spend their time digging,” said Brian Forschler, a researcher with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
To control a pest, you first have to know how if operates: its likes and dislikes, what it eats, where it lives, its enemies, etc. Over the years, researchers have made great strides into understanding termite behavior, said Forschler who has studied termites for more than 20 years.
“In the late 1800s to early 1900s they were called white ants. In the 1920s, scientists placed them in a special order (Isoptera) apart from ants. In 2007 they were identified as social cockroaches and classified in the order Blattodea that contains roaches,” Forschler said. “So you see, science isn’t written in stone. It’s constantly being questioned.”
Termites feed on bait in a bait station Image credit: Brian Forschler.
Forschler collects termites in wooden bait traps, takes them back to his Athens laboratory and watches them in action.
“We put sections of 4-inch PVC pipe in the ground, and fill (them) with wooden sandwiches. The problem is figuring out what happens while we aren’t there – we are just getting a snapshot view of their lives,” he said.
Over the years, Forschler has tracked termite colonies, collected termites, dyed them blue or red and released them to track their movement. And he’s created artificial termite families to see how they interact outside their home nests.
In one study, his then graduate student Jeff Whittman placed six groups of termites in tiny arenas and video taped their behavior for seven days.
“They are simple creatures. They did about 10 things. (They) stood around, moved, chewed, tunneled, cleaned other termites and defecated,” he said. “They’re like cows and other animals that feed on cellulose. They spend time throwing-up and chewing their cud.”
Termites forage for food for themselves and take food from other termites, but they never share their cud, he said.
The UGA research team found termites to be very clean animals.
“We consistently saw them clean each other. A termite doesn’t clean itself, except for its antenna. They depend on their brothers and sisters to clean them,” he said.
Adult termites (the king and queen) can reportedly live for 20 years, and Forschler has termites in his collection that are over 14 years old.
“I have some in my lab that are 13 to 14 years old from logs in Georgia, and they were likely 4 years old when we collected them. A number of different types of social insects live that long. It’s not unusual,” he said.
Forschler’s research has also revealed that termites are not random foragers. They tend to use the same access points over and over.
On test sites, used since 2000 on UGA Athens campus, 83 percent of the infestations identified by Forschler’s team entered buildings using expansion joints, 11 percent followed cracks in stone foundations, 4 percent liked areas where wood was in contact with the ground and 2 percent used the weep holes in brick veneer.
Forschler has identified the following termite traits:
The queens lay most of their eggs in the spring.
An average colony contains around 50,000 termites, until they locate a large food resource (like a house, tree stump, or large log). Over the course of a few years that same colony can grow to include hundreds of thousands of termites.
Termites need a humid environment to survive.
Five species of subterranean termites are native to Georgia and one invasive species, the Formosan subterranean termite.
Five of those species swarm and release new adults (kings and queens, called alates) in the late winter and spring (February-May), while one does so in late summer (July-September).
Colonies move all the time and often don’t return to the same spot.
Termites have to swallow soil-applied termiticides to die, not just touch the pesticide.
For more information on termites, see these UGA publications:
Merritt Melancon, news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
As children get out of school for the summer, many people will be spending time at outdoor camps or just playing in the woods. Unfortunately, in Georgia, just a few summer hours spent outside can mean coming home with red bug bites.
Red bugs are a type of mite. In their larval stage, when they can cause so much itching and torment, they’re called chiggers. They live along the margins of woods and fields and are particularly common in blackberry bramble patches.
It’s a common misconception that they live in Spanish Moss; they actually live in the undergrowth surrounding the trees that support the moss, said Nancy Hinkle, an entomology professor at the University of Georgia’s Department of Entomology.
Unlike ticks or mosquitos, they don’t feed on the blood of their host but rather their victims’ skin cells.
They don’t carry any diseases, but they can ruin a camping trip or a week at summer with the severe itching caused by their bites, Hinkle said.
“Unfortunately, they tend to collect around places where your clothes are tight,” Hinkle said. “Really, it seems to be the more embarrassing the better.”
The itching is caused by a complex set of chemical processes that the mite uses to harvest and eat its host’s skin cells.
The bugs inject a digestive enzyme into the skin to start breaking down the skin cells. Then they form a hole in the skin so they can access fresher skin cells under the outer layers.
The enzymes and the proteins left behind by the bug cause the skin to become inflamed and to itch.
The interesting part of this process is that the mites don’t even want to dine on human skin cells. They’d much prefer to dine on the skin of lizards and rodents.
The red bug itself usually falls off of its human victim within a few hours of biting them because they can’t survive long on a person’s body. By the time the tell-tale red bumps emerge, the bugs are long-gone, Hinkle said.
“Chiggers can survive on us for less than 24 hours ,” Hinkle said. “As miserable as you are, they are doing worse by the time they fall off.”
So stories of redbugs burrowing under skin or being inside the welts they cause are not true.
There are a few folkloric remedies for red bugs, but while most are not really effective, they don’t really hurt either, Hinkle said.
Covering red bug bites with nail polish, hair spray or nail polish remover will not provide any lasting relief from the bites. However, the sting of applying these products to a bite may distract a person from the itching for a while.
“If you want to paint them with fingernail polish, more power to you,” she said. “When the acetone is burning your skin, it will make you feel better for a while.”
Unfortunately, there’s no way to permanently stop the itch caused by red bugs, Hinkle said.
“Anything that reduces the itching, Benadryl or hydrocortisone cream, will help,” Hinkle said. “It’s purely symptomatic treatment at that point. There’s no cure once you’ve been bitten.”
Individuals who are going berry-picking or participating in other activities in possibly chigger-infested areas should use an insect repellent containing DEET on their bodies and spray their clothing with a product like Repel Permanone Insect Repellent, Duranon Tick Repellent or Sawyer Clothing Insect Repellent.
Parents of red bug victims and adult red bug victims alike should keep an eye out for secondary infections caused by scratching red bug bites. The bites should stop itching after about a week or so, Hinkle said.
Slime molds are caused by the fungi Physarum spp. and Fuligo spp.
All turfgrasses are susceptible to slime molds
Symptoms: Large numbers of pinhead-sized fruiting bodies may suddenly appear on grass blades and stems in circular to irregular patches 1-30 inches in diameter. Affected patches of grass do not normally die or turn yellow and signs of the fungi usually disappear within 1 to 2 weeks. These fungi normally reproduce in the same location each year. The fungi are not parasitic, but they may shade the individual grass leaves to the extent that leaves may be weakened by inefficient photosynthesis.
Conditions favoring Slime Molds: Slime molds are favored by cool temperatures and continuous high humidity. An abundance of thatch favors slime molds by providing food directly in the form of organic matter.
Management:
Remove slime mold by mowing.
Remove using a gardening tool or high pressure stream of water.
Fire Ants image by Novak and Hu and taken from Entomology Today article
When water levels rise, red fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) stream from their nests and rapidly grip onto their nearest neighbors in order to form rafts to carry them to safety. Each individual ant is denser than water and is in danger of sinking. However, the ants somehow manage to stay afloat, and they don’t just draw the line at constructing rafts — they routinely form bivouacs, assemble towers, and even coalesce into droplets when swished in a cup.
“You can consider them as both a fluid and a solid,” said David Hu from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who teamed up with Paul Foster and Nathan Mlot to investigate how balls of living fire ants self-assemble.
Galls are abnormal vegetative growths on trees that result from the feeding and egg laying activities of various insects and mites. Chemical secretions from the adults while laying eggs as well as the saliva from the feeding larvae cause the plant to react abnormally.
The more common gall producers on trees are aphids, beetles, jumping plant lice, midges, mites and wasps. Each species causes a swelling of plant tissue that is characteristic on specific plant parts such as the stem, twig, leaf or petiole. Most often the gall is more readily identified than the gall producer. It is convenient to identify galls and their producers simply by noting where the gall is located and also the shape of the gall. Table 2 on page 43 of the Forest Health Guide for Georgia lists some of the more common trees that are frequently attacked by gall producers along with a description and location of the gall.
Generally galls are not life threatening to trees. Oftentimes the most drastic effects are premature leaf fall and dieback of several smaller branches.
On small trees, galls should be pruned and destroyed. Leaf and twig litter that is on the ground around the base of the tree should be raked and disposed of. A few of the common species are shown in the images included here.
For information on galls, see page 42 of the publication Forest Health Guide for Georgia. This publication is produced by the Georgia Forestry Commission.
Other galls include:
Galls on black cherry, Andy Boone, South Carolina Forestry Commission, Bugwood.org
Adult mosquito control is a growing business. However, depending on the local environment, success can vary. The first technique in most mosquito control programs is eliminating or treating the water where mosquito larvae develop (larviciding). In addition, some homeowners are looking for help to kill adult mosquitoes (adulticiding).
As with any pest management program, identifying the pest is extremely important. Knowing the particular species of mosquito you are targeting will help operators locate the larval habitat and devise the most efficient plan of attack.
In support of this type work, Dr. Rosmarie Kelly from the GA Department of Public Health has offered mosquito identification classes in the past and plans to do so in 2014 if the budget permits. Watch the Pest Control Alerts training calendar for information on these and other trainings. Dr. Kelly may be able to help with identifying small numbers of mosquitoes if you cannot attend these classes. Also see the information on mosquito identification in this article.
By identifying the pest species and targeting the larval habitat first, companies can sell their program as operating in an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) manner. This is because these pesticide applicators target the pest in the most efficient manner even if that is by adulticiding. In some areas of Georgia, there can be vast acreages of low lying, wet areas that create excellent larval mosquito habitat. In this case, the best operators can do on a small scale is to larvicide the closest larval habitats where mosquito larvae are present and then adulticide around the area you are trying to protect.
ULV Application
When trying to suppress the adult mosquitoes prior to an event, some type of Ultra Low Volume (ULV) sprayer can be very helpful. There are a variety of sizes available, from those that fit in the back of a pickup truck, which can be used for whole communities to handheld units for much smaller areas. There are also some that fit on 4-wheelers, which can be handy for a smaller operation.
Permethrin is still a good choice for ULV applications, but the whole range of products available is listed in the Commercial Pest Management Handbook. As with all pesticides, follow the label closely.
With small scale adulticiding, suppression of the pest population is usually temporary. Any of the products when used properly will kill the adult mosquitoes that come in contact with the aerosol produced by the ULV machines. However if there are large areas of larval habitat surrounding the site, more mosquitoes are coming. When significant mosquito populations are present, a Wednesday and Friday evening application may be needed to provide relief for a weekend event. From an environmental, ethical and economical standpoint; it is important to only apply pesticides when significant mosquito populations are present.
One technique that has been used for a long time to monitor adult mosquito populations is the “landing rate count”. The technique consists of counting the number of mosquitoes that land on a person in a given amount of time. Consistency is extremely important with this technique. It is best if one person conducts the evaluation at a specified site, at a similar time of day, wearing similar clothing. Dark blue coveralls (most biting flies are attracted to dark colors) can be used to standardize clothing and reduce the actual number of bites received. A typically protocol could involve an individual standing in a semi-protected area (out of the wind) for one minute, and then counting the number of mosquitoes landing on the front half of the body. Landing rate data is important when documenting the need for adulticide applications.
Timing ULV Applications
ULV adulticiding should not be conducted during the heat of the day, when the insecticide will be carried away from the mosquito habitats by heat radiating from the ground. Adulticiding should be conducted when there are temperature inversion conditions that hold the aerosol of insecticide droplets close to the ground where the mosquitoes are active. This is usually in the early morning and later in the evening when the ground cools and the air close to the ground is cooler than the air higher up.
Barrier Sprays
Another technique that has proven effective for adult mosquito suppression is barrier sprays. Applicators apply a uniform spray to vegetation, taking care to cover the undersides of the leaves where the mosquitoes rest during the heat of the day. The adult mosquitoes are killed when they contact the residual chemical. Any type of pressurized sprayer can be used. The active ingredient of choice for barrier sprays is bifenthrin, but permethrin and the other pyrethroids are effective as well.
Barrier sprays are particularly effective against the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, which is our most common mosquito pest throughout most of Georgia. (In coastal areas, the salt marsh mosquito is predominant). The Asian Tiger mosquito develops in containers during the heat of the summer and is described as a daytime biter. Consequently, it is difficult to use ULV applications for this pest, because the Asian tiger mosquitoes are not active after dusk when conditions are best for ULV operations. As a result, public education to encourage people to eliminate containers and standing water around their homes is extremely important, but realize that compliance is a concern.
West Nile Virus
The presence of West Nile Virus (WNV) has created more interest in mosquito control. Now there is a focus on the Southern House mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, which is the primary vector of WNV in the southeast. This species prefers to develop in nutrient rich waters, like waste lagoons and catch basins. When it gets dry, the water stands in the catch basins and storm drains and this species proliferates. This leads to confusion about wet and dry conditions. When the weather is wet, all the other mosquitoes do well. When it is dry and water stagnates in the storm drain system, the Southern House mosquito thrives and there is an increased risk of WNV transmission.
There has been a whole series of products developed for treating water in storm drains and catch basins, including Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis (Bti) and Bacillus sphaericus based products and a variety of methoprene formulations.
Pesticide Applicator Licensing for Mosquito Control
A couple years ago Georgia created a mosquito control category for certified pesticide applicators, Category 41 – Commercial Mosquito Control. Applicators that were already treating mosquitoes before this time under Category 31 (Public Health) are allowed to continue treating mosquitoes using their current license. New applicators should obtain a Category 41 license.
The training manual for Category 41 is very helpful, since it was created to be used as a resource for smaller operators. Order the Mosquito Pesticide Applicator study materials (Mosquito Biology, Surveillance and Control) at – http://www.caes.uga.edu/publications/for_sale.cfm
If an applicator wants to obtain a Category 41 license, there is also a video to help as they study the manual and prepare for the exam. Find the video at this website.
If any commercial companies are conducting large-scale mosquito control programs, they may need to file a Notice of Intent (NOI) for an NPDES permit. The website for the Georgia Mosquito Control Association (gamosquito.org) has information on permitting and is loaded with other relevant information.
(The Alerts editor wants to say ‘Thank you!’ to Dr. Rosemarie Kelly who reviewed and contributed to this article.)
Pipe organ mud daubers are elongated, slender and usually shiny-black wasps that vary in length from about a half inch to an inch or more. These wasps make their mud nests with the cells arranged in the form of long tubes, hence the common “pipe organ” name.
Individual wasps make a buzzing sound as they shape mud into a nest and provision it with spiders for their larvae to feed upon during development. The female wasp stings and paralyzes the spider and then lays an egg on it and seals it in the mud tube. The nests are often in protected but open areas under the roof eaves of buildings or sheds. Mud daubers rarely sting and are generally considered beneficial in reducing spider populations.
Pipe Organ mud-dauber — Johnny N. Dell, Bugwood.org
