Common Pests

This is a listing of common structural and garden pests.  If you have suggestions, comments or additions to this listing,  please e-mail them to us

University of Maine Insect Fact Sheet

Insectlopidia: A resource for information on many different types of insects

NEW Pesticide Memorandum regarding Pest Bird Control and the Peregrine Falcon Recovery Program in Ontario

General Pests

• Fleas have changed history. More human deaths have been attributed to fleas than all the wars ever fought. As carriers of the bubonic plague, fleas were responsible for killing one-third of the population of Europe in the 14th century.
• Two fleas breeding, under ideal conditions, have the potential to produce two trillion descendants in nine months
• The Anopheles mosquito was the cause of six to seven million cases of malaria annually in the United States in the 1930's
• Ticks transmit the organisms for relapsing fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease.
• Since 1980, 80,000 cases of Lyme disease have been reported in 48 states.
• The house fly can harbor more than 100 kinds of pathogenic organisms and may transmit more that 65 human and animal disease organisms.
• Cockroaches may transmit food poisoning, cholera, dysentery and typhoid.
• Seven to eight percent of the general population has an allergy to insects. In a study conducted in Atlanta concerning the chronic flu symptoms of inner city children, it was learned that as many as 45 percent were allergic to cockroaches