“We are only now beginning to focus on and investigate how the homes that humans create also form a complex indoor habitat for critters and other small life forms . The objective is to better understand this ancestral coexistence and its implications for our physical and mental health ”. This is how Misha Leong sums up the pioneering study she has led and contributed by experts from the California Academy of Sciences, North Carolina State University and the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
Their results, published in the journal Scientific Reports , shed light on the authentic zoo of bacteria, fungi, insects, arachnids and myriapods that accompany us in our homes after taking the census in 50 urban buildings in the town of Raleigh, North Carolina. .
The first of his conclusions is that insects do not like heights. The new research reveals that the variety of these animals increases on the lower floors of buildings; in fact, their preferred place to settle is basements. They have also found that the density of arthropods increases in spacious rooms, with rugs or carpets and with more windows or doors, as these provide more access routes from the outside. In addition, the greater or lesser diversity of species corresponds to that which exists in the environment .
But do not panic. As one of the authors of the study, the entomologist Michelle Trautwein, recalls, bugs can contribute to our being healthier. “A growing number of indications suggest that some modern diseases are related to a deficit of exposure to microorganisms, and domestic insects play a fundamental role in the diffusion of microbial biodiversity “, warns this expert.
They like to be in the living room
That wealth or poverty also varies from stay to stay. After taking a count of key species – ladybugs, fruit flies and psocopterans – the researchers found that common rooms, such as living rooms, were home to more insects than kitchens, bedrooms or bathrooms . And that spiders, mites, centipedes, millipedes or certain beetles proliferate especially in dark and humid spaces.
A shocking result is that order does not play a decisive role in the greater or absence of “fauna” in the houses; Quarters that are sleeve to shoulder only attract folids, those characteristic long-legged spiders that make their webs in the corners. Not even factors such as the use of pesticides or the fact that we have many plants or pets live with us have too much impact on the composition of domestic ecosystems. What determines its composition is, above all, the biodiversity of the environment.
The study is part of an international project to delve into this, until now, undervalued area of coexistence between human beings and the creatures that keep us company since we began to build stable shelters, some 20,000 years ago.
Photo: carpet beetle (Anthrenus verbasci). Credit: Matt Bertone / North Carolina State University
