Researchers at North Carolina State University interested in 'urban ecology' asked for volunteers and then surveyed 50 homes in Raleigh NC to catalog what kind of arthropods were living in the homes' rooms. (The researchers didn't look inside walls.)
There were 550 rooms total. Only 5 rooms (1%) had no arthopods, (4 bathrooms and one bedroom). All homes had arthropods living in them, ranging from 32 to 211 species per house.
23% were flies, 19% spiders, 16% beetles, 15% ants and wasps, 4% hemiptera (true bugs), 4% lice, 4% cockroaches, 3% springtails, 2% moths and butterflies, 2% isopods (pillbugs), 2% silverfish, 2% millipedes, 1% crickets and grasshoppers
Cobweb spiders, carpet beetles, gall midges and ants were found in 100% of houses surveyed. They say there's a myth that you're never more than 3 feet from a spider, and they say their evidence suggests that it may well be true. No bedbugs were seen. No brown-recluse spiders and only one lone black widow spider.
They say that the fact that most people don't even notice the abundant arthropod ecosystem all around them means that most of these creatures are relatively benign. (To humans, not necessarily to each other.)
They say that similar surveys have started in Sweden, Peru and San Francisco to get comparative data.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...53/?no-ist
There were 550 rooms total. Only 5 rooms (1%) had no arthopods, (4 bathrooms and one bedroom). All homes had arthropods living in them, ranging from 32 to 211 species per house.
23% were flies, 19% spiders, 16% beetles, 15% ants and wasps, 4% hemiptera (true bugs), 4% lice, 4% cockroaches, 3% springtails, 2% moths and butterflies, 2% isopods (pillbugs), 2% silverfish, 2% millipedes, 1% crickets and grasshoppers
Cobweb spiders, carpet beetles, gall midges and ants were found in 100% of houses surveyed. They say there's a myth that you're never more than 3 feet from a spider, and they say their evidence suggests that it may well be true. No bedbugs were seen. No brown-recluse spiders and only one lone black widow spider.
They say that the fact that most people don't even notice the abundant arthropod ecosystem all around them means that most of these creatures are relatively benign. (To humans, not necessarily to each other.)
They say that similar surveys have started in Sweden, Peru and San Francisco to get comparative data.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...53/?no-ist