Crickets are black or brown insects measuring more than 13 mm long. Their heads have long antennae, two compound eyes and mouthpieces, a shredder with powerful mandibles. The thorax carries the organs of locomotion, three pairs of legs and two pairs of very ribbed wings.
The forewings are rather tough. They serve as a protective case for the membranous hindwings, folded into a fan at rest. Of the three pairs of legs, the posterior is the most remarkable, because it is specialized for jumping.
Its femur is particularly strong. The abdomen ends with two sensory filaments.
The female is distinguished from the male by the presence of the ovipositor, a long cylindrical laying organ located between the two cerques.
| Nom français | Grillon domestique |
| Nom anglais | House Cricket |
| Nom latin | Acheta domesticus |
Lifecycle:
Adult crickets mate as a result of a sexual parade. The male then emits a spermatophore, that is, a whitish gelatinous drop-shaped envelope that contains the spermatozoa. He deposits it under the genital opening of the female.
After a few seconds, the female tears it to release the spermatozoa that then migrate inside her reproductive organs.
A few days later, the female finds a suitable place to lay eggs. She carefully pushes her ovipositeur into the soil and lays her eggs. The laying of a hundred eggs is spread over several days.
After the incubation of the eggs, the duration of which varies according to the species and the conditions of the environment, tiny crickets similar to adults but without wings are born.
Cricket is an insect with incomplete metamorphosis, or hemimetole. During their growth, young crickets undergo several moults that allow them to grow and reach the adult stage, with complete wings and functional reproductive organs.
Habitat:
The domestic cricket, as the name suggests, usually lives in homes and other human constructions. It is often found where the temperature is high, such as in heating pipes and behind radiators and heaters.
He likes bakeries and can even settle in metro stations, as was already the case in Paris. In hot weather, it is found outdoors, where it mostly frequents dumps and other garbage piles. This cricket must absolutely spend the winter indoors to survive.
Spring cricket and fall cricket frequent fields, roadsides and land adjoining houses, where they also sometimes enter.
Appeler René Gélinas Votre exterminateur local, Expérience et intégrité dans la gestion parasitaire
Tel 514 830 2819
Hantavirus, definition and mode of transmission
Hantavirus is a severe lung syndrome caused by a virus. It is secreted in the urine, feces and saliva of infected animals. Most often these are rodents. When humans come into direct or indirect contact with these secretions, the virus is transmitted to them. Ditto when they are bitten by infected rodents.
However, the virus is not transmitted from human to human, only from animal to human. This type of disease is called zoonoses because they can only be transmitted to humans through an animal. It has been found that domestic animals (apart from the domestic rat) and livestock cannot contract hantavirus so there is every reason to believe that only rodents can carry it.
Symptoms of hantavirus
Being a lung disease, one of the characteristic symptoms of hantavirus is difficulty breathing. At the beginning of the disease, the infected person begins to feel fever, chills, headache and muscle pain.
It is about two weeks after the appearance of the first symptoms that they are usually accompanied by a feeling of shortness of breath. Nevertheless, this last manifestation of the disease can be observed after two days as after six weeks; it depends on the organism of the individual.
Hantavirus can also lead to kidney disease or infection. And although they are rare and very few people are prone to them, there is currently no treatment to combat these ailments. It is therefore better to be careful not to contract them.
Power:
These omnivorous insects feed on:
- Leaves
- Seeds
- Fruit
- Insects
- food debris,
- Peelings
- cooked meat,
- baked goods.
Special Behaviour
Crickets are among the best known of song insects. Who hasn’t heard their characteristic singing on a beautiful summer evening? This sound phenomenon is called stridulation. It is the exclusive attribute of male crickets.
To stridulate, most crickets raise their upper wings at an angle of about 45° to their body. They then very quickly rub the inner edges of the wings against each other, like a bow that would vibrate part of the other wing. Both wings have special structures to create and amplify sounds. The space created between the raised wings and the body of the insect is also a sounding board for stridulation.
During breeding season, the male domestic cricket can sing for several hours. An individual has already produced 4,200 pulses in four hours!
Crickets are considered jump specialists. The heavily muscular femurs of their hind legs contain elastin, a substance that allows insects to leap great distances.
Control methods
Even if they are noisy, domestic crickets usually do not cause damage.
Traps can be made to capture using small containers filled with beer, sweet vinegar, or a mixture of molasses and vanilla essence or lemon juice with water. Attracted by these liquids, crickets will drown in them. Then all you have to do is get rid of it. Sticky hatches sold in hardware stores are also useful.
To prevent crickets from entering your home, especially towards the end of summer:
- Keep the doors closed.
- plug cracks;
- Remove organic debris around the house
- reduce lighting in the evening;
- avoid excess moisture in different parts of your home.
In the event of an outbreak of one of the three species of domestic crickets in Quebec, contact an exterminator.
