How could you throw that face out of your house?
(Mirror Daily, United States) – We have gotten so comfortable in our houses, with our technology and our fancy furniture, that we forgot that nature was all around us at some point in the quite near past. But unbeknownst to most of us, nature was still lurking very close by, as the first study of its kind from North Carolina shows that you have scores of arthropods all around your house.
The team of researchers, led by North Carolina State University’s Matthew Bertone, performed the first ever systematic census on the number of arthropods in the average American house.
Making abstraction of pests, which have been recorded before, the team went through every square inch of a total of 50 American houses in order to write down every arthropod they could find.
And they did find quite a lot of them.
The entomologists found that every home had somewhere between 32 and 211 different species of arthropods belonging to between 24 and 128 different families.
Some of the arthropods were common enough, but some turned out to be quite rare, with the lead researcher stating that he found a number of arthropods that he’s never seen before despite having been an entomologist for 15 years.
Equipped with headlamps, nets, forceps, and tiny aspirators, the team went through every inch of the 50 North Carolina houses and found an astounding total of over 10,000 specimens; they also stated that there were arthropods in every single room in which they looked.
Despite this fact, the team wanted to calm the public opinion, stating that it’s something perfectly normal. All of the arthropods encountered are harmless to humans, and most of them were most likely strays, accidentally wandering into the house and not knowing how to get out.
The most common types of arthropods encountered were carpet beetles, gall midges, ants, spiders, and even book lice, the parasitic lice’s harmless cousins.
By performing this study, the team managed what no other team has done before – an average systematic census of arthropod population in urban environments.
Another thing the researchers wanted to point out was the fact that most environmentalists avoid looking in urban environments for the development of the insect, bird, and animal populations there because of the humans’ impact on them, despite the fact that humans are animals themselves, and should be considered relevant to the development of the nature around them.
The team is now looking to perform the same type of study in other urban environments, but with different climates, in order to come up with a more to-the-point census.
Image source: Pixabay