School integrated pest management with emphasis on biology and control of the human head louse, Pediculus capitis de Geer.

摘要

Through a process of educational workshops, development of the National School Integrated Pest Management (IPM) WWW Site (http://www.ifas.ufl.edu/∼schoolipm/), and production and distribution of training materials, the entire K--12 public school system of the state of Florida was targeted for IPM adoption. Surveys indicated the percentage of Florida school districts practicing IPM increased from just 46% in 1996 to 74% in 1999. Surveys also indicated a significant change in types of pesticides being applied and in the techniques used to apply pesticides. Cockroaches were reported as the top pest in 1996 while ants became the top pest in schools in 1999. Adoption of IPM seemed to have a slight positive correlation with schools contracting pest management services to private firms. Creation of a risk assessment model using spatial statistics allowed visualization of various risk and benefit factors with regards to pest management in schools. The model validated the advantage of using two key concepts of IPM; monitoring and precision targeting.;A clinical trial was initiated to determine the treatment success of two of the most popular brands of head lice treatments. Approximately 70% of samples obtained from NIXRTM-treated children and 52% of samples obtained from RIDRTM-treated children still contained live lice 24 hrs after treatment and represent treatment failure. The synergized pyrethrin in RIDRTM did not improve performance over the non-synergized permethrin in the NIXRTM product, suggesting target site insensitivity or the kd-r mechanism of insecticide resistance.;Experiments examining the off-host survival of head lice indicated that adult lice died relatively quickly at 30°C (LT50 = 14 hrs) but survived as long as 48 hrs at room temperature (20--25°C). After being removed from the host, eggs of head lice do not hatch at 20°C but will hatch up to 9 days at 25 or 30°C.;Analysis of cuticular hydrocarbons using gas chromatography revealed unique hydrocarbon patterns for each of the two species of Pediculus . These results support the elevation of the human head louse and the human body louse to species level. In addition, unique morphological features of the head louse were documented through scanning electron microscopy and compound microscopy.