Many of our customers express concerns about whether the pesticides that they treat their lawns with are safe for the environment. While a number of the chemical agents currently on the market are fine when used in a controlled fashion, scientific research has recently revealed that new natural methods of controlling insect populations could be even better for the planet. Natalisin, a recently discovered chemical, may be able to cut down on the number of pests that reproduce, without causing the side effects common with other treatments.
What Is Natalisin?
Natalisin is a neuropeptide that naturally occurs within the brains of insects. What is a neuropeptide you may ask? It is a chemical that controls the majority of biological activity in insects, including actions like muscle movement. One of the most important functions that natalisin controls is pheromone creation.
Pheromones help male and female insects signal each other, via scent, when they’re ready to mate. Scientists in South Korea, Slovakia and Kansas used genetic tools that limited the production of natalisin in a variety of insect species, including silk moths, red flour beetles and fruit flies. In the process, they discovered that the insects became uninterested in mating. In some cases, they completely lost the ability to attract partners.
How Can These Findings Be Used in Pest Control?
Of course, the results discovered in the labs can’t be perfectly replicated in the wild because that would require mass genetic modification of specific species. The major benefit, however, is that by exclusively targeting natalisin, scientists believe that they could develop insect control methods that wouldn’t affect anything but insects. Natalisin doesn’t occur in other kinds of creatures, meaning that plants and other animals would supposedly be safe. Even better, the natural chemical isn’t toxic.
The most effective modern pest control methods often employ Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approaches and this research seems to fit right in. Whereas many people simply try to kill as many individual pests as they can each season, IPM techniques control populations more effectively by attacking specific insects when they’re the most vulnerable.
Using natural chemicals like neuropeptides to stop common garden and commercial orchard pests when they’re in the middle of their mating seasons won’t kill all of them, but it will reduce numbers to the point where they don’t cause significant damage. Even better, such a method would preserve the biological diversity that the landscape requires to thrive, by ensuring that these keystone insect species don’t go extinct within specific regions.
Pest control doesn’t have to revolve around poisoning the land or paying for expensive treatments that rely on dangerous chemical agents. To learn more about the environmentally-friendly pest control options that keep Dallas greener, call ABC today or visit us online.
Comments
While the lab results are not representative of natural conditions,the modifications described above do not have to be on a large scale.Specific genetic alterations in geographically high density areas as opposed to species per say may lead to faster changes due to the high reproductive propensity of these species.