New for 2018, the book Advances in the Biology and Management of Modern Bed Bugs provides pest managers with a raft of information about bed bugs and offers helpful insight into how these challenging pests thrive.
It’s been just over 50 years since the publication of Robert Usinger’s seminal text, Monograph of Cimicidae, long considered the ‘Bible’ of the bed bug world.
At the time of publication in 1966, bed bugs were on the global decline, thought to have been forever defeated through the use of powerful insecticides such as DDT, other organochlorines and later organophosphates.
Fast forward a few decades and reports emerged of bed bug infestations across all sectors of society, with outbreaks of both the common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, and the tropical bed bug, Cimex hemipterus. Today, an unprecedented resurgence in bed bugs globally has led to the need for up-to-date information on the biology and management of the pest.
Advances in the Biology and Management of Modern Bed Bugs is a new and complete synthesis of bed bug information from the past to the present, featuring contributions from 60 widely recognised and experienced experts in the field of bed bugs.
The new book updates and expands on existing material on bed bugs. Including new data from a range of sources, the book offers chapters that detail the impact that the global resurgence of bed bugs has had on the housing, hotel, medical and legal industries across the world.
The book provides essential reading for pest managers on new industry standards that have been developed to help guide bed bug management practices; how large multinational pest management firms deal with bed bug management to ensure consistency of treatments and positive outcomes for technicians; and information on prevention (which is largely about reducing the risk of bed bugs), detection and monitoring, non-chemical management, insecticide resistance, and chemical control.
A specific chapter focusing on the monetary impact caused by bed bugs provides useful information for pest companies looking to convince potential customers in the hotel industry of the importance and benefits of implementing active bed bug management plans. Often the fiscal impact of infestations, in terms of lost business and ruined reputation, is as important to operators as the health concerns of infestations.
A section on bed bug biology covers topics such as host seeking and blood feeding behaviours, harbourage selection and aggregation, dispersal, chemical ecology, and population genetics – information that is essential for those tasked with creating control strategies.
Industry experts discuss the challenges they’ve experienced in managing bed bugs in some of the most difficult situations possible, the various issues they’ve faced in achieving control and what management techniques they employed that led to a successful outcome.
With the growing litigation over bed bugs, and legal cases involving millions of dollars, the book also explores the legal requirements of professional pest managers and the products they use, laws relating to bed bugs, and legal case studies involving the nuisance pest.
For pest management professionals carrying out bed bug treatments or focusing on the hospitality industry, this contemporary and comprehensive text should prove to be an indispensable reference tool and aid in delivering quality bed bug management programs.
Advances in the Biology and Management of Modern Bed Bugs is edited by Westmead Hospital’s director of Entomology, Stephen Doggett, Virginia Tech’s Dini Miller and Chow-Yang Lee, from the University Sains, Malaysia. The book is available now from all major book stores and Amazon.
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