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Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes

Although humans and arthropods have been living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in...

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Autores principales: Bertone, Matthew A., Leong, Misha, Bayless, Keith M., Malow, Tara L.F., Dunn, Robert R., Trautwein, Michelle D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4727974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26819844
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1582
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author Bertone, Matthew A.
Leong, Misha
Bayless, Keith M.
Malow, Tara L.F.
Dunn, Robert R.
Trautwein, Michelle D.
author_facet Bertone, Matthew A.
Leong, Misha
Bayless, Keith M.
Malow, Tara L.F.
Dunn, Robert R.
Trautwein, Michelle D.
author_sort Bertone, Matthew A.
collection PubMed
description Although humans and arthropods have been living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, USA). We discovered high diversity, with a conservative estimate range of 32–211 morphospecies, and 24–128 distinct arthropod families per house. The majority of this indoor diversity (73%) was made up of true flies (Diptera), spiders (Araneae), beetles (Coleoptera), and wasps and kin (Hymenoptera, especially ants: Formicidae). Much of the arthropod diversity within houses did not consist of synanthropic species, but instead included arthropods that were filtered from the surrounding landscape. As such, common pest species were found less frequently than benign species. Some of the most frequently found arthropods in houses, such as gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and book lice (Liposcelididae), are unfamiliar to the general public despite their ubiquity. These findings present a new understanding of the diversity, prevalence, and distribution of the arthropods in our daily lives. Considering their impact as household pests, disease vectors, generators of allergens, and facilitators of the indoor microbiome, advancing our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of arthropods in homes has major economic and human health implications.
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spelling pubmed-47279742016-01-27 Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes Bertone, Matthew A. Leong, Misha Bayless, Keith M. Malow, Tara L.F. Dunn, Robert R. Trautwein, Michelle D. PeerJ Biodiversity Although humans and arthropods have been living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, USA). We discovered high diversity, with a conservative estimate range of 32–211 morphospecies, and 24–128 distinct arthropod families per house. The majority of this indoor diversity (73%) was made up of true flies (Diptera), spiders (Araneae), beetles (Coleoptera), and wasps and kin (Hymenoptera, especially ants: Formicidae). Much of the arthropod diversity within houses did not consist of synanthropic species, but instead included arthropods that were filtered from the surrounding landscape. As such, common pest species were found less frequently than benign species. Some of the most frequently found arthropods in houses, such as gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and book lice (Liposcelididae), are unfamiliar to the general public despite their ubiquity. These findings present a new understanding of the diversity, prevalence, and distribution of the arthropods in our daily lives. Considering their impact as household pests, disease vectors, generators of allergens, and facilitators of the indoor microbiome, advancing our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of arthropods in homes has major economic and human health implications. PeerJ Inc. 2016-01-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4727974/ /pubmed/26819844 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1582 Text en ©2016 Bertone et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Bertone, Matthew A.
Leong, Misha
Bayless, Keith M.
Malow, Tara L.F.
Dunn, Robert R.
Trautwein, Michelle D.
Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title_full Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title_fullStr Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title_full_unstemmed Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title_short Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
title_sort arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4727974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26819844
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1582
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