German Cockroach Facts

Appearance

German cockroaches are well-known indoor cockroaches with a distribution that is world-wide. Adults are easily recognized by their light brown or tan coloration with two black horizontal stripes located on the pronotum immediately behind the head, and growing to a length of 13-16 mm. The much smaller young, or nymphs, are darker, almost black in color, also with the black stripes behind the head. While adult German cockroaches have wings, they rarely fly, preferring to run.

Behavior, Diet & Habits

Although capable of living outdoors in tropical environments, German cockroaches are most commonly found indoors, with a preference for the warmer and more humid areas of a structure. In homes, these insects will typically be found in kitchens and bathrooms, but can move to other areas of a home if food and moisture are available.

In most cases, German cockroaches are introduced into a structure or residence when bags, boxes or cardboard containers are brought into the home. They may even be brought in with used appliances. In multiunit apartment buildings, German cockroaches can easily move between units, using the shared plumbing and pipes as a highway.

German cockroaches are scavengers, capable of feeding on most any food source available, including toothpaste, soap and the bindings of books. These pests are known for their ability to capitalize on the availability of even the smallest amounts of food by feeding on crumbs missed during cleaning or feeding on the dirty dishes left in the sink overnight.

Reproduction

German cockroaches are known for their ability to reproduce quickly. Female German cockroaches only need to mate once for the production of young. After mating, and under normal conditions, they will produce, on average, 4 to 6 egg cases during the course of their lives, with each egg case, or ootheca, containing approximately 30 to 40 eggs. This egg case is then carried by the female until 1 to 2 days before hatching. Depending upon the conditions, the average time for development, from egg to adult can range from 54 to 215 days, with an average of approximately 100 days. As adults, German cockroaches can survive anywhere from 100 to 200 days

Things to Know About Brown Recluses

Life Cycle:

Adult brown recluse spiders often live about one to two years. Each female produces several egg sacs over a period of two to three months, from May to July, with approximately fifty eggs in each sac. The eggs hatch in about one month. The spiderlings take about one year to grow to adulthood. The brown recluse spider is resilient and can tolerate up to six months of extreme drought and scarcity or absence of food. On one occasion it survived in controlled captivity for over five seasons without food.

Behavior:

A brown recluse's stance on a flat surface is usually with all legs radially extended. When alarmed it may lower its body, withdraw the forward two legs straight rearward into a defensive position, withdraw the rearmost pair of legs into a position for lunging forward, and stand motionless with pedipalps raised. The pedipalps in mature specimens are dark, quite prominent, and are normally held horizontally forward. When threatened it usually flees, seemingly to avoid a conflict, and if detained may further avoid contact with quick horizontal rotating movements. The spider does not usually jump unless touched brusquely, and even then its avoidance movement is more of a horizontal lunge rather than a vaulting of itself entirely off the surface. When running the brown recluse does not leave a silk line behind, which would make it more easily tracked when it is being pursued. Movement at virtually any speed is an evenly paced gait with legs extended. When missing a leg or two it appears to favor this same gait, although (presumably when a leg has been injured) it may move and stand at rest with one leg slightly withdrawn. During travel it stops naturally and periodically when renewing its internal hydraulic blood pressure that it requires to renew strength in its legs.

Habitat:

Brown recluse spiders build asymmetrical (irregular) webs that frequently include a shelter consisting of disorderly thread. They frequently build their webs in woodpiles and sheds, closets, garages, plenum spaces, cellars, and other places that are dry and generally undisturbed. When dwelling in human residences they seem to favor cardboard, possibly because it mimics the rotting tree bark which they inhabit naturally. They have also been encountered in shoes, inside dressers, in bed sheets of infrequently used beds, in clothes stacked or piled or left lying on the floor, inside work gloves, behind baseboards and pictures, in toilets, and near sources of warmth when ambient temperatures are lower than usual. Human-recluse contact often occurs when such isolated spaces are disturbed and the spider feels threatened. Unlike most web weavers, they leave these lairs at night to hunt. Males move around more when hunting than do females, which tend to remain nearer to their webs. The spider will hunt for firebrats, crickets, cockroaches, and other soft-bodied insects.

How to Identify a Brown Recluse Spider

5 Identifying Features of a Brown Recluse Spider

1 Look at the color. A brown recluse has a dirt or sandy brown body with a slightly darker marking at its center. Its legs are a lighter brown and completely uniform in color, with no additional markings.

2  Examine the violin shape on the spider's body. It's a slightly darker brown color than the rest of the body, or cephalothorax. The violin shape isn't clearly defined, so it may not look to you exactly like the musical instrument.

3 Count the eyes. The brown recluse, unlike other spiders, has only six eyes. They are arranged in pairs: one pair is in the center, and there's a pair on either side. Because the eyes are so small, it can be difficult to see them without a magnifying glass. If you count eight eyes, you're not looking at a recluse.

4  Look for fine hairs. The brown recluse has many fine, short hairs on its body. Unlike some other spiders, it does not have spines on its body or legs. If you see a spider with spines, it's definitely not a recluse.

5  Check the body width. The brown recluse's body doesn't grow to be larger than ¹⁄₂ inch (1.3 cm). If you're looking at a spider that's larger than this, it's a different type of spider.

Bed Bug Behavior and Habit

Bed Bug Behavior and Habit

Understanding how bed bugs eat, live, and reproduce will help you find an infestation before it has a chance to spread and to monitor for the presence of the bed bugs after your home has been treated.

Feeding:

• Appear to prefer to feed on humans, but will feed on other mammals and birds
• Will readily travel 5-20 feet from hiding places to feed on host
• Even though they are primarily active at night, if hungry they will seek hosts in daylight
• Feeding can take 3-12 minutes
• The rusty or tarry spots found on bed sheets or in bug hiding places are because 20% of the time adults and large nymphs will void remains of earlier blood meals while still feeding

Life Stages/mating:

• Bed bugs need at least one blood meal before the bug can develop to the next life stage
• Each stage requires the molting of skin
• To continue to mate and produce eggs, both males and females must feed at least once every 14 days
• Each female may lay 1-3 eggs per day and 200-500 eggs per her lifetime (6-12 months)
• Egg to egg life cycle may take 4 to 5 weeks under favorable conditions

Living conditions:

• Bed bugs can survive and remain active at temperatures as low as 46 F, but they die when their body temperatures reach 113 F. To kill bed bugs with heat, the room must be even hotter to ensure sustained heat reaches the bugs no matter where they are hiding
• Common bed bugs are found almost anywhere their host can live

How to Find Bed Bugs

How to Find Bed Bugs

If you have an infestation, it is best to find out early on, before the infestation has a chance to spread. Treating a minor infestation is far less costly and easier than treating the same infestation after it becomes more widespread.

Low-level infestations are much more challenging to find and correctly identify. Other insects can be easily mistaken for bed bugs. If you misidentifying a bed bug infestation, it gives the bugs more time to spread to other areas of the house or hitchhike a ride to someone else's house to start a new infestation.

Bites on the skin are a poor indicator of a bed bug infestation. Bed bug bites can look like bites from other insects, rashes, or even hives. Some people do not react to bed bug bites at all.

Signs of a Bed Bugs

An accurate way to identify a possible infestation is to look for physical signs of bed bugs. When cleaning, changing bedding, or staying away from home, look for the following:

• Rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses caused by bed bugs being crushed
• Dark spots, which are bed bug excrement and may bleed on the fabric like a marker would
• Eggs and eggshells, which are tiny and pale yellow skins that nymphs shed as they grow
• Live bed bugs

Where Bed Bugs Hide

When bed bugs are not feeding, they hide in a variety of places. Around the bed, they can be found near the piping, seams and tags of mattress and box spring, and in cracks on the bed frame and headboard.

If the room is heavily infested, you may also find them in the following areas:

• In the seams of chairs and couches
• Folds of curtains
• In drawer joints
• In electricity receptacles and appliances
• Under loose wall paper and other wall hangings
• At the junction where the wall and the ceiling meet

Since bed bugs are only about the width of a credit car, they can squeeze into really small hiding spots. If a crack will hold a credit card, it can hide a bed bug.