{"id":321438,"date":"2025-11-27T11:35:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T11:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/pest-control-blog-guardian-pest-solutions-2\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T11:35:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T11:35:19","slug":"pest-control-blog-guardian-pest-solutions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=321438","title":{"rendered":"Pest Control Blog | Guardian Pest Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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September 15, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

<\/p>\n

With winter approaching, you may wonder if or how pests
\nsurvive the months of brutal cold and food shortage ahead. Insects and rodents
\nhave a variety of strategies for coping with the seasons, but because they have
\nfundamentally different physiology, those strategies are quite different. <\/p>\n

Collectively, rodents have two options for surviving the winter; hibernate or remain active. Groundhogs are one of the best-known hibernating rodents; in autumn, they fatten themselves up and dig a hibernation burrow, and during hibernation their body temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate all greatly decrease. Mice and voles are excellent examples of rodents that remain active; they maintain networks of tunnels under the snow that they use to navigate and continue foraging for food such as , with the snow insulating them against the most extreme cold and providing some measure of protection against predators. Mice also commonly move indoors during the winter, though it is unclear whether warmer conditions or more food access are the greater attractants for them. Squirrels also remain active throughout the winter, but because they build up large fat reserves and hoard food before winter, they can spend relatively little time outside of their dens. Spending more time resting in their dens allows the squirrels to conserve energy and body heat. <\/p>\n

Being more diverse, insects have a greater variety
\nof tactics for surviving the winter. Some migrate south for the winter. The
\nmonarch butterfly is almost certainly the most famous insect migrator in
\nAmerica, but other butterflies, moths, and dragonflies use the migration tactic
\nto avoid winter altogether. Still other insects simply freeze to death, with
\nnorthward migrants from farther south re-colonizing every year. The Asian tiger
\nmosquito is one such pest that is not known to survive the winter as far north
\nas Minnesota, but they\u2019re such efficient hitchhikers that they make their way
\nback into the state most summers. Tomato and tobacco hornworms are also unable
\nto survive the extreme winters of the upper Midwest, but the widely-roaming,
\nstrong-flying adults often make their way as far as North Dakota and Minnesota
\nover the summer. <\/p>\n

Other insects enter a form of dormancy known as
\ndiapause, which is triggered by environmental cues such as decreasing
\ntemperatures, shortening day length, changes in the chemical makeup of food
\nplants, or the insects\u2019 own biological clock. In many insects, diapause may
\nonly occur during a certain life stage; for example, praying mantises only
\ndiapause as eggs, goldenrod gall midges only diapause as larvae, alfalfa
\nleafcutter bees only diapause as prepupae, boxelder bugs only diapause as
\nadults, and queen yellowjackets and paper wasps diapause as adults. These
\ninsects typically synchronize their life cycle so that only the stage that is
\ncapable of diapause is present at the onset of winter, though in some cases
\nother life stages are simply killed off by freezing temperatures. Diapause
\noften comes with major physiological changes, such as dehydration of the body
\nand\/or production of cryoprotectant substances that protect the body from the
\nformation of ice crystals. In many insects, diapause ends well before weather
\nis reliably favorable for the insect to resume activity and they transition
\ninto post-diapause quiescence, which is easier to terminate so the insect can
\nresume activity. For example, cluster flies, Asian lady beetles, and queen
\npaper wasps typically are in diapause from roughly September\/October to
\nFebruary or March, and will not resume activity even if weather warms during
\nthat period. However, these same insects in post-diapause quiescence will
\nawaken on any warm, sunny day from when diapause ends until spring. As a
\nresult, if these insects overwinter indoors, they may be apparent in fall as
\nthey enter and begin diapause, seemingly vanish through November, December, and
\nJanuary regardless of weather, than become active on warm, sunny days in
\nFebruary or March. <\/p>\n

Some pest insects, such as certain ants,
\ncockroaches, and bed bugs, avoid winter entirely by living indoors alongside
\nhumans. Thanks to heated buildings and steam tunnels, many cockroaches live far
\nbeyond where they otherwise could. For example, German cockroaches (native to
\ntropical southeast Asia) and American cockroaches (native to tropical Africa) cannot
\nsurvive long at temperatures below 50\u00b0F, but access adequate shelter in
\nbuildings and sewers to survive alongside humans throughout the upper Midwest. Many
\naquatic insects also remain active throughout the winter, living beneath the
\nice in ponds and lakes, though the low temperatures greatly slow their
\nmetabolic rates. <\/p>\n

Finally, a small handful of insects are highly
\nspecialized to take advantage of the relative absence of predators that winter
\nprovides and are active in or on the snow. Fall cankerworm moths are typically
\nactive in late October or early November, finding mates and laying eggs right
\naround the first snow. Snow crane flies, snow scorpionflies, and snow
\nspringtails are active slightly later, scuttling or hopping about on the
\nsurface of snow on relatively warm winter days to seek mates or feed on moss,
\nalgae, and lichen. Spring stoneflies are often the first harbinger of spring,
\nemerging from the first ice-cracks to form on rivers and streams in early
\nspring and mating on the ice. <\/p>\n

So while you\u2019re piling on layers, staying indoors,
\nand sipping hot chocolate, the insects and rodents are using a variety of
\nstrategies to handle the winter chill. <\/p>\n