SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Don’t freak out, but there may be more than 100 identifiable types of bugs in your home right now [csmonitor.com]. Most of them, you will be happy to know, are harmless.

In the first study ever to analyze the biodiversity of arthropods – insects, spiders, centipedes, mites, and other crawly things – inside the human home, a team of entomologists visited 50 houses in the Raleigh, N.C. and gathered specimens, both dead and alive, from every visible surface.

The result was nothing short of astounding. From the 554 rooms sampled, the scientists collected over 10,000 bugs and identified at least 579 morphospecies, a term used for organism types that have no discernible physical differences, but may have genetic differences. On average, individual homes had about 100 morphospecies.

In New York, half those species are cockroaches, the other half are landlords.

Original Submission