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Category Archives: Pest Management
I’m Afraid of Bed Bugs and Infestation … Help?
Written by Nancy Miorelli It’s no wonder people are afraid of bugs with how they’re portrayed in the media. It’s true that insects are our major competitors for both our food and our health and invade our homes. In my … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Pest Management
Tagged afraid, airplane, bed bugs, bedbug, help, hotel, infestation, movie theater, paranoia
2 Comments
Can Spiders Learn From Each Other?
Written by Joe Ballenger Your Name: Mark Your Bug Question: I have spiders in and around my house. I eventually get around to removing their webs from hard to reach places like living room chandelier. It takes so long that … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Ecology, Pest Management
Tagged Cellar Spiders, learning, Spiders, Web Building
4 Comments
What are carpet beetles doing on my cilantro?
Written by Joe Ballenger Dear Entomologist, Could you please help with a bug question. I found many small bugs on my cilantro flowers which look like carpet beetles. Should I be worried about them in my vegetable garden and or … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Ecology, Pest Management, Physiology, Pollination
Tagged Beetles, Carpet Beetles, Pest, Pollen Feeders, Pollinators
2 Comments
Family Planning in The Age of Zika: How do I Avoid Mosquitoes?
I’ve seen you writing a lot about Zika virus, and I’m planning on starting a family soon. I was wondering, how worried do I need to be about this and how can I avoid the virus? A lot of what … Continue reading
Microcephaly, Zika, correlation, and causation: the science behind CDC’s confirmation of Zika and microcephaly
Written by Joe Ballenger I’m still following the Zika/Microcephaly literature. I’m not writing about every paper which comes out, but I am writing about the ones I feel are pretty important. The most recent ‘big paper’ came out in the … Continue reading
Posted in News, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
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Questions about head lice.
Written by Joe Ballenger We get a lot of questions about lice, and these are really important. On Biofortified, I wrote an article about head louse treatments that was relatively depressing. There are a lot of companies which market louse … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Lice, Lice Treatments, Medicine, Parasites
4 Comments
Why is Oxitec using tetracycline for a genetic switch? Why not something else?
Written by Joe Ballenger Here’s where we get to the meat of the question our follower asked…why use the antibiotic tetracycline as a switch? Why not something else? Last week, we discussed a system which could potentially work for this … Continue reading
Posted in Chemistry, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Biochemistry, Genetic Control, GMOs, Mosquitoes, Oxitec, Pest Control, Physiology, RIDL, Tetracycline
7 Comments
So let’s talk about another type of GMO for a minute…
We’ve gotten this question, and it’s a really good question, but I didn’t initially understand what the person was asking. I knew what they were getting at-why is Oxitec using a tetracycline dependent system-but I wanted to wait for them … Continue reading
Posted in Chemistry, Education, Evolution, Insect Rearing, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Biochemistry, genetics, Genomics, GMOs
1 Comment
Our next few posts will be about GMO mosquitoes.
We’ve gotten a handful of questions about GMO mosquitoes via Twitter, and through an interview Joe did for a radio station (details of which are forthcoming). So, we decided to switch the post midstream. We’re still planning on doing a … Continue reading
So what’s the deal with Zika virus? What’s going on in Brazil?
In the recent few weeks, the news has been filling up with stories about a new epidemic called Zika virus. Since it’s a hot topic, and potentially very important, I wanted to write something explaining what this virus is from … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, News, Pest Management, Physiology
Tagged Education, Insects, Mosquitoes, Parasites, Physiology, Viruses, Zika
10 Comments
