The Penny Markt in Krems an der Danube, about an hour’s drive from Vienna, prides itself on two things: low prices, and the provenance of its meat and fresh produce. But on a balmy day last August, shoppers rummaging through boxes in search of local bargains discovered a more exotic, albeit less welcome, surprise lurking in the banana boxes.
The culprit is a stowaway Brazilian wandering spider, an 11-centimetre-long black-red arachnid whose bite can cause convulsions, hypothermia, death, and, if you’re male, especially painful injuries. Loss of control of erection. You can imagine the shock.
The store was closed for preventive disinfection and the spider escaped, never to be heard from again. But it’s not the only invasive creepy crawler to make its way into European tabloids recently.
France has gained an unfortunate reputation ahead of the Olympics for being plagued by bedbugs, with Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Grégoire warning people that “no one is safe”. You can catch them anywhere.
Tiger mosquitoes, which can carry dengue and Zika viruses, have also been found across the country, leading Paris authorities to hire entomologist “detectives” to track their breeding sites.
Meanwhile, the Turkish pharmaceutical industry is looking more broadly to Europe as an exciting new export market for scorpion antivenom.
Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Is climate change to blame for this apparent arthropod invasion?
The reality is not as apocalyptic as the headlines suggest, says Dr Matt Green, chief entomologist at UK-based global pest control company Rentokil Initial, which operates businesses across Africa We have business in mainland China.
Dengue fever is far from epidemic. Reports of bed bugs in France have increased in large part because people saw the scary headlines and started looking under their mattresses. If we are seeing more invasive species in general, it’s mostly not because of rising temperatures.
“I’m often asked how climate change affects our business. Well, given that humans have spread all major pests to almost every country and certainly every major center of human activity, but not as much as you might think. ,” Green said wealth.
Is climate change to blame for this apparent arthropod invasion?
The good news is that those worried about encountering the wrong Brazilian wandering spider can rest easy.
Most species need more than warmer temperatures to establish themselves in new, radically different ecosystems. For example, Sheerness Docks near London have been home to 10,000 yellow scorpions for centuries because trading ships brought them from the continent, but these harmless creatures did not spread because conditions were not suitable.
How climate change is affecting Europe’s pest populations
This is not to say that climate change will not affect the pest situation in Europe.
Termites, long a problem in Mediterranean countries, are invading northern Europe as temperatures rise, although the relative lack of wooden buildings means they are unlikely to cause widespread economic damage there.
Aedes mosquito Mosquitoes – which include genus tiger mosquitoes – are already well established in Italy and are also spreading in France, meaning countries like Switzerland are unlikely to be spared.
Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told the BBC: “Europe is already seeing how climate change can create more favorable conditions for invasive mosquitoes to spread to previously unaffected areas.”
Fortunately, these are not the malaria-carrying species—that is Aedes mosquitoit is unlikely to spread to Europe because Europe does not have large areas of stagnant water, unlike Aedes mosquito-It needs to reproduce.
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But that’s not the case for Asian hornets, which, depending on where you live, may soon be having a picnic near you. “They move easily through France and there are examples of them overwintering in the UK, which means we may have them now, so don’t worry,” Green said.
And then there are bed bugs. Even before the recent surge, infections cost the French economy 230 million euros ($246 million) a year, according to health agency Anses. An emergency notification could cost a hotel thousands of dollars in treatment costs and lost revenue, and could cause hysteria and panic during the Paris Olympics.
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These six-legged vampires may have always been there, but they do prefer warmer weather.
“Bed bug eggs hatch in just five days when the temperature inside the house is 25 to 26 degrees Celsius (77 to 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Under normal circumstances, it takes 10 days when the temperature is around 20 degrees Celsius. wired Last year, when the panic was at its worst
Beyond climate change, what’s happening to Europe’s pests
Whether helped by rising temperatures or not, we’re likely to see more pests that are best suited to humans and our behavior, which helps them spread.
In rural settings this is often achieved through monocultural farming, although sometimes all that is required is a hobby of importing non-native plants.
The oak procession moth, a species endemic to southern Europe that damages forests and releases hairs that can irritate skin, eyes and respiratory tracts, established itself in the UK in the 2000s when an oak tree was shipped from Europe. Ironically, the incident occurred very close to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where authorities monitor such incidents.
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What you’re more likely to notice, however, are urban pests.
Rats, mice, cockroaches and more all share some traits that make them ideally suited to living in close proximity with humans, whether we want them to or not. Their small size allows them to crawl through tight spaces and are usually active in the dark and at night, making them difficult to spot. Crucially, they are also omnivorous.
“They’re very flexible, so they don’t care about one or two degrees [change in temperature]. They already live in air-conditioned buildings,” said Rentokil’s Green. “Some of the moths in the warehouse now barely fly. They don’t have to do that. They’re just living in a world full of food and being moved around by humans. It’s a hell of a life.”
Sometimes well-intentioned or necessary changes in human behavior help urban pests thrive.
Media frenzy aside, bedbug populations did It grew rapidly around the world in the early 21st century. In Australia, increases ranged from 500% to 4,500%; in New York City, bed bug complaints to the city council surged from 537 in 2004 to 10,985 in 2009, but have since declined.
Entomologists attribute this resurgence to the end of the era of DDT — the notorious insecticide that dramatically reduced pest populations worldwide in the mid-to-late 20th century before serious environmental and health concerns ended its use. before species begin to develop resistance. Essentially, we are returning from a period of unusually low insect activity to a historical norm.
Don’t expect this to change. While the pest control industry is deploying increasingly sophisticated monitoring strategies and “physical” interventions, such as steam cleaning rooms of bed bugs, abandoning chemical control means we lose a powerful weapon in the fight against pests.
A similar situation may be happening with rats, at least in Europe, where regulators are increasingly pessimistic about the use of anticoagulant rodenticides.
There may be a good reason for this, but pest control people are nervous. As one person put it, “A whole generation of pest controllers have been trained to put rat poison in bait boxes. If you take it off the market, what do you have left? Go to quote alienwhat should we use, vulgar language?
future
Humans have caused the extinction of many species, mostly unintentionally, and we continue to do so. However, it turns out that at least some of us don’t like this species very much, but they have proven to be tenaciously adaptable. Almost by definition, when we do this, pests multiply.
So what can we expect? In Europe, climate change and human activity are unlikely to make deadly spiders a regular part of grocery shopping or cause mosquito-borne diseases to reach tropical levels.
But they can change the populations of animals that share our environment. Get used to Aedes mosquitoes and Asian wasps; stay wary of rats and bed bugs.
However, what may change most is our expectations of pest control. With the “spray first, ask questions later” approach firmly entrenched in history, eradicating pests as soon as they appear may ultimately be remembered as a 20th-century idea.
