‘Bug boom’ as warmer weather boosts cockroach and ant populations – صحيفة الصوت

Shane Warland from Debug Nelson is having trouble keeping up with demand.

“Everything is booming,” Warland said. By “everything”, he’s talking about cockroaches, ants, rodents and wasps.

Call-outs have noticeably increased in the last three years or so, Warland said.

New Zealand has about 40 species of ants, 12 of which are native. Of the 30 species of cockroach that reside here, about half are native.

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In Nelson, the main home intruders were Argentine ants, white-footed house ants and German cockroaches, Warland said.

People often spotted Gisborne cockroaches (native to Australia), he said. “He’ll come in if there’s a window or door open. People see them and think they have an infestation.”

However, this species tended to live outside, eating rotten vegetation and only venturing inside when the weather was cold.

It was German cockroaches that can really take hold, Warland said.

“There was a lady that picked up a coffee machine from an op shop that was infested with cockroaches. Once they spread out they got everywhere, they breed so quickly.”

They’ll also establish themselves behind dishwashers and fridges, in microwave motors and behind power points.

“Where it’s warm and cosy and dark and no one bothers them,” Warland said.

Keeping a clean house helps deter these insects, but he’s seen tidy homes affected, too.

“I have seen clean houses where ants will come in because they’re passing through. You can be clean but once you get white-footed house ants they get in your walls and ceilings.”

Many people’s go-to solution was to attack ants with fly spray or bug bombs. But this could make a problem worse, Warland said.

“They’ll think they’re under attack, so they’ll split their nest and breed like crazy.”

This will often be in harder-to-reach areas: inside walls or ceilings.

With the queen only consuming food produced within the nest, ingestion baits could also be ineffective, Warland said.

The best way to tackle ants was by using a non-repellant insecticide, which ants, which are “touchy feely”, transferred to the nest through their bodies, he said.

The unwelcome intruders were becoming more resistant, Warland believed.

“They’re getting used to what we’re throwing at them. They’re survivors; they’ve been around a long time, they’ve walked with the dinosaurs.”

Entomologist and science communicator Morgane Merien said the home intruders tend to be the introduced species.

“The native ones tend to stay in their own habitat, and are quite innocuous, and even beneficial for some services which they provide to our ecosystems.

“I think more people are seeing these introduced ants and cockroaches because our summers are becoming longer and warmer, leading to increased numbers and longer breeding season,” Merien said.

Merien, who presents TVNZ’s Bug Hunter, said cold weather forces insects to seek warmth and shelter. And because we’re inside more for the same reason, we’re more likely to encounter them, she said.

As the climate warms, introduced insects which previously would not have survived in New Zealand will likely start to thrive, she said.

Some (like the brown marmorated stink bug, the spotted lanternfly and the gypsy moth) can create problems in the agricultural sector.

“It’s important to keep an eye out, and report any weird looking critter which you are not familiar with to the Ministry for Primary Industries.”

Ruud Kleinpaste, known to television viewers as the Bugman, doesn’t like the word “pest”, and he’s careful not to use it when he gives talks to children.

“Do you mean an unwanted insect? What is the unwanted part of it? The only pests are the ones that don’t belong here in our ecosystem, and alter our natural habitat.”

Cockroaches are useful creatures: the Gisborne variety breaks down vegetation beneath the mulch in your garden, while German cockroaches are the “best recyclers on the planet”, who naturally team up with the messiest animal on the planet: humans.

“If you get cockroaches, query your own hygiene systems at home,” Kleinpaste said.

“If you spill spaghetti bolognaise at home they’ll come in and leave a business card and say, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll clean it up, I have been doing this for five million years’.”

Kleinpaste is more concerned with the insects that damage our crops: like guava moths making their way south, and other creatures that would not have survived when our climate was cooler.

“Those are pests, from a biosecurity point of view.”