Have a big house? Study says you probably have a lot of bugs
File photo courtesy: Flickr Creative Commons/ John Talbot
Digital Reporter
Monday, August 8, 2016, 4:41 PM - You'll find bugs in practically every home, but it turns out some insects have expensive taste in real estate. According to a recent study published in the journal Biology Letters, wealthier residences tend to have a larger diversity of insects, and researchers think it can be traced back to the environment.
A team of scientists from the California Academy of Sciences at North Carolina State University and the Natural History Museum of Denmark looked at a number of high and low income homes in Raleigh, North Carolina.
They spent about half an hour in the room of each house, documenting the different types of bugs they found.
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It was discovered the average home hosts around 60 different types of insect species -- but wealthier homes had around 100 different types of bugs.
Lower income homes had about 50 different types.
There's no definitive conclusion why wealthier homes tend to have more bugs, but some have linked it to a theory called the "luxury effect" -- a concept that was born in a 2003 study that found wealthier neighbourhoods usually have a larger diversity of vegetation than lower income communities, leading to a wider variety of insects.
"We still have so much to learn about indoor ecology and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and arthropods," Michelle Trautwein, co-author in the study, said in a statement.
The team plans to further their understanding by examining insect diversity in homes in Australia, Madagascar, China, and Antarctica in 2017.
Sources: Biology Letters | Flickr
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