IPM AND THE CASE OF
“WHAT DUN IT”
James Bryant, Curator of Natural History
Museum Department, City of Riverside, CA
Patrick Kelley, General Manager
Insects Limited, Inc.
Michael Schuetz, Collections Technician
Historic New England, Collections & Conservation
Center
IPM and the Case of
"What Dun It?"
Session Goals:
• conceptual introduction to Integrated Pest
Management (IPM)
• apply what you already know about IPM to
a “mystery” scenario
• start an inventory of what you may want or
need to know about IPM
IPM and the Case of
"What Dun It?"
Outline:
•Session
Groups
go through their scenarios, noting
• their
Introductions
and summary
description
deductions
at each stage,
andof
Integrateda Pest
Management
drawing
conclusion
• Brief intro to the biology and ecology of pest
• Reporters
review
each
scenario
and
species
describe their group's findings and
• General introduction to pest monitoring and
conclusions
mitigation measures
•• General
question
and scenarios;
commentModerator
period
Distribution
of “mystery”
and reporter identified for each group
• Conclusion
WHAT ARE PESTS?
• VERTEBRATES - mice, rats, bats, birds, and
squirrels.
• INSECTS & OTHER INVERTEBRATES - some
merely a nuisance, but may also be agents of
destruction; insects are most common and often
most difficult pests with which to deal.
• MOLD & FUNGI - not pests in the usual sense,
but commonly grouped with pests because they
are often treated chemically and conditions
allowing mold/fungi to form can also be attractive
to other pests.
WHICH INSECTS ARE PESTS?
•
•
•
•
PROTEIN FEEDERS
(fur, feathers, hide
products, wool, silk,
bone, etc.) –
Carpet Beetles
Hide & Leather
Beetles,
Odd Beetles
Case-making &
Webbing Clothes
Moths
Furniture Carpet Beetle, larva and adult
Actual adult size 1/10 inch long
Odd Beetle adult male
Actual size 1/8 inch long
Odd Beetle larva
WHICH INSECTS ARE PESTS?
•
•
•
•
•
GENERAL FEEDERS
(mold, starch,
cellulose, grains) –
Drugstore Beetles
Cigarette Beetles
Booklice
Silverfish & Firebrats
Cockroaches
Cigarette Beetle adult
Actual size 1/8 inch long
Cigarette Beetle larva
Actual size 3/16 inch long
Adult Booklouse
Actual size 1/32 to 3/16 inch long
Firebrat
Actual size 1/3 to 3/4 inch long
WHICH INSECTS ARE PESTS?
•
•
•
•
•
WOOD FEEDERS
Furniture Beetles
Powder-post Beetles
Deathwatch Beetles
Carpenter Ants
Termites
“WHY ARE THEY HERE?”
•
•
•
•
•
•
Like humans, pests need food, water, & shelter.
Collections storage and historic houses may
easily provide for one - or all -of these needs:
Climate controlled, stable environment
Warmth during cold seasons
Higher humidity during dry seasons
Quiet, cluttered spaces left undisturbed for long
periods
Stored quantities of organic material
Areas covered by fine, organic dirt & “dust”
With things that good, why leave?
Integrated Pest Management (IPM):
an “ecosystems” approach to pest control that seeks
to protect museum staff and visiting public from
exposure to toxic chemicals. IPM is “preventative
conservation”, i.e. it tries to prevent the conditions in
which pests thrive from occurring in museum settings.
The “hard work” part: No one person on a
museum staff can be responsible for carrying out all
IPM methods. Everyone has a role to play.
European House Cricket
Acheta domestica
IPM Program Components
• Good housekeeping: producing
an environment
inhospitable to pests
• Integrity of building
(excluding pests)
• Maintenance (general
upkeep of building)
• Habitat modification - depriving pests of their
optimal environment
IPM Program Components
 Isolation assessment of
incoming materials for
pest contamination
 Monitoring &
Inspection – regular
checking for pests in
areas of active/
potential infestation
IPM Program Components
• Identification &
Documentation pest activity records;
“What Dun It?”
• Treatment action pest control
procedures specific to
a pest species, site
and/or artifact
IPM Program Components
• Evaluation & Thresholds - determination
program effectiveness and “acceptable” levels*
of pest infestation
• Education - informing staff and the public of
methods and benefits of IPM
But First…
Can You Tell “What Dun It?”
• Each table has a pest management case
to solve: the stories you will read are true,
only the names have been eliminated to
protect the innocent.
• The Moderator for each table will lead the
group through the choices presented in
each case, and the Reporter will record
those choices.
“The Case of the Broken Bat”
• Scene 1: You arrive early for
your meeting with the
mammalogy collections
manager. The door from the
food service hall into the
collections storage room is left
open. Closing the door behind
you, you notice that a good
deal of sound can be heard
coming in from the food hall
through the space under the
door. Whipping out your PDA,
you make a note to…
• 1) Tell the director it’s
ridiculous to have collections
storage located next to the
food hall
• 2) Place a work order with
building services to have a
tight-fitting sweep attached to
the bottom of the door
• 3) Place an order with
central stores to have an “Out
to Lunch” sign purchased for
the collection manager’s door
“The Case of the Broken Bat”
• Scene 2: Entering the
mammalogy storage work
area, you approach the
collection manager’s desk. It
seems the collections manager
has not gone out to lunch:
indeed, a half-eaten sandwich
lies atop papers on the desk,
and steam rises from a freshly
poured cup of java. A small
bird flutters away through the
open window above the desk.
Continuing your notes, you …
• 1) Jot down a memo to the
Director to have all work
spaces removed from
collections storage areas
• 2) Enter a reminder to
discuss a new policy regarding
consuming food at work
spaces
• 3) Place an order with
building services to have a fine
mesh screen installed in the
window over the collections
manager’s desk
“The Case of the Broken Bat”
• Scene 3: Where could the
collections manager have
disappeared to? Turning away
from the desk, you walk down
the closest range of storage
cabinets. You soon come to an
open cabinet with a protruding
drawer. In the drawer rests a
tray with a specimen that may
have once been a bat; the
wings of the bat are now a fine
mesh of holes. At this point, it
looks like…
• 1) The collections manager,
handling a request that came
in during lunch, discovered a
specimen that could have
been destroyed by pest
infestation
• 2) The last person to use the
cabinet must have left the door
and drawer open
• 3) In despair upon
discovering the infestation, the
collections manager leapt out
the window
• 4) All of the above
“The Case of the Broken Bat”
• Scene 4: Your attention
turns to the “broken bat”.
You notice a fine brown
powder scattered on the
floor of the tray beneath
the specimen. Within the
powder you find a small
number of what appear to
be the cast-off husks of
some tiny creature, less
than 1/8 inch long.
Examining these husks
you note the following
features:
• A light tan color
• A many-segmented
structure, resembling
accordion pleats
• Numerous, curving
bristles surrounding each
segment
WHAT DUN IT?
Odd Beetle larva
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Scene 1: Late on Monday
afternoon, you enter the textile
storage room to pull objects for
a traveling exhibit. As you
reach for a box stuffed deep
into a shelf, you accidentally
step onto something on the
floor that sticks to your foot.
You soon realize you have
stepped into one of those
annoying sticky traps that your
predecessor placed throughout
the room. Pulling it from your
foot, you see what appear to
be “bugs” stuck in the glue
next to your shoe’s tread mark.
Feeling pressured from your
new job you should…
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
You Should…
• 1) Gently replace the smashed glue trap and
hope that no one can identify you from your
shoe treads.
• 2) Salvage what you can from the damaged
trap and take it to someone that may be able to
identify the “bugs”.
• 3) Make a mental note to have housekeeping
perform a sweep of textile storage to pick up
these disgusting things.
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Scene 2: When you look up
from your feet, you realize that
there are 3 or 4 insects sitting
stationary on the wall only a
few feet from the shelf that you
were working in. Not even sure
if they are alive you reach for
one. Before you can touch it, it
hops away from your hand,
flies for a short distance and
quickly runs into a shadowed
area. Not being one who cares
much for creepy crawlers you
brace yourself and….
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Not being one who cares much for creepy crawlers
you brace yourself and….
• 1) Say to yourself, this is a bad ending of a bad day, I’m going home.
• 2) Immediately start to scratch vigorously on areas of your upper torso.
• 3) Find a glass jar with a screw lid that used to hold sewing pins and
carefully trap one of the buggers against the wall and close the lid over it.
• 4) Both 2 & 3
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Scene 3: Looking closely
at the insect in the jar,
you determine that it
looks more like a moth
than it does a beetle or a
fly. It is a solid cream
color and the tips of the
wings are feathered kinda
like Farrah Fawcett’s hair.
It is a little more than a ¼
in long. Your mind
wanders back to the
sticky trap and the
thought occurs to you…
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Your mind wanders back to the sticky trap and
the thought occurs to you…
• 1) Monitoring for insects in sticky traps might just work.
• 2) I really need to scrape that glue off of my shoe
before I go out tonight.
• 3) Perhaps the bug in the jar is the same as the ones
in the traps.
• 4) Both 1 & 3
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Scene 4: You retrieve the
objects you came for in the
first place, in particular a
box labeled “duck feather
boa”. As you open the box,
the smell of your
grandmother’s attic hits
you in the face and
momentarily kicks in a
memory of fighting with
your brother when you
were 10 years old. A
spider-webby material is
sticking to the inside of the
box and covering a portion
of the boa. Much of the boa
is missing or badly
damaged. You note the
following other clues…
“The Case of the Devoured Duck”
• Small skinny white worms with
brown heads are crawling on
the inside of the box.
• A few of the bugs fly out of the
box right past your face as you
pick up the boa to examine.
• Dirty oblong tubes a little larger
than the worms are sticking to
the remnants of the feathers.
These tubes are covered with
pepper-like material the same
color as the feathers.
WHAT DUN IT?
“The Case of the Holy Table”
• Scene 1: On Friday evening
you are making the closing
rounds through your
institution’s most popular
historic house, located on the
water in Gloucester, Mass.
(You are hurrying to meet your
co-workers for a much-needed
after-work beer.) In one of the
rooms, known as the ‘Pine
Kitchen,’ you notice what looks
like a ‘pile’ of dust on the floor
alongside a table, a 17th
century piece made of oak.
Taking a closer look, it is
indeed a pile of dust, and looks
a lot like fresh sawdust. Being
tired, late, and thirsty you
decide to…
• 1) Brush the dust
underneath the hooked rug
lying next to the table and call
it a day.
• 2) Get angry and decide to
‘chew out’ your staff for doing a
poor job on housekeeping.
• 3) Take a closer look and
write yourself a note to further
inspect the situation when you
come in on Monday morning.
• 4) Make sure to tell the
contractors, who are working
on the house, to ‘not track their
dust inside.’
“The Case of the Holy Table”
• Scene 2: Early Monday
morning you remember to look
at the ‘Pine Kitchen’ table
again. Getting down on your
hands and knees, you look at
the dust on the floor and notice
a number of very small, round
holes in the table leg. Further
along the leg, you see more
holes and what look like
‘tunnels’ running along the
wood grain; these tunnels are
packed with more dust. You
rub the dust between your
fingers, noting its slightly gritty
texture. Looking at the other
table legs you see more holes,
tunnels, and dust. You let out a
sigh and think to yourself….
• 1) “I hate Mondays’ and ”I
really need another beer”.
• 2) “Get a magnifying glass
and closely inspect the holes
and tunnels.”
• 3) “It’s just as well; I didn’t
really like this table anyway.”
• 4) “Take some reference
photos, vacuum all of the dust,
and keep an eye on the holes.”
• 5) “Plug the holes and
tunnels with wood fillerpreferably one that matches
the color of the oak.”
“The Case of the Holy Table”
• Scene 3: You tell the
Collections Manager about the
table and your findings. He
says, ‘Hmmm. Last year,
rafters in our house had
something like that. My cousin
looked at it and told me that
some kind of worm was eating
the wood, that the sawdust is
the worms’ fecal waste. Kind of
gross, eh?’
Scratching your head, you
think….
• “I should go to:
• www.museumpests.net/
1) “Oh, no! I just touched
worm
fecal
and
sign
upwaste!!”
on the
• pestlist@museumpests.net
2) “If I used a stethoscope
and ‘listened’
to the
table,
mailing
list and
post
my I
might hear chewing, munching
questions.”
or tapping sounds.”
• 3) “Coating the table with
clear urethane would ‘seal off’
the worm activity. (The
Collection Manager’s ‘bug
expert’ said it got rid of the
worms in the rafters!)”
• 4) “Spray the table with
Heavy Duty Insect Killer,
making sure to spray inside all
the holes and tunnels.”
“The Case of the Holy Table”
• Scene 4: You come back
three days later and see
what looks like more piles
of sawdust on the floor.
You get back down on
your hands and knees,
you peer into the holes
and you see a bug crawl
out of a hole!
This critter …
• Is about 3/8” long,
cylindrical body, with
parallel rows of pits on its
wing covers.
• Is medium-brownish in
color.
• Has what looks like a
‘dome-like’ shell for a
head.
WHAT DUN IT?
Figuring out “What Dun It” is
the first (and often the most
valuable) step in using an IPM
program strategy to solve
complex pest issues.