Human Impact
Forficula auricularia has been known to cause significant damage to crops, flowers, and fruit orchards when at high population levels. Some of the commercially valuable vegetables it feeds upon include cabbage, cauliflower, chard, celery, lettuce, potato, beet, and cucumber among others. Earwigs readily consume corn silk and can damage the crop. Among fruits, they have been found to damage apple, peach, plum and pear orchards. It is not uncommon to find them wedged among petals of fresh cut carnations, roses, dahlia and zinnia.
In addition to all of the agricultural problems caused, humans are not very fond of F. auricularia because of its foul odor and annoying propensity to aggregate together in or near human dwellings.
Control of F. auricularia has been attempted using some of its natural enemies, including the parasitoid fly Bigonicheta spinipenni, the fungi Erynia forficulae and Metarhizium anisopliae, as well as many species of birds. Insecticides have also been successfully implemented, although commercial products are rarely targeted specifically towards earwigs. Multipurpose insecticides for control of earwigs, grasshoppers, sowbugs and other insects are more common. Diazinon, an organophosphate insecticide, has been known to continue killing F. auricularia up to 17 days after initial spraying .
Humans have, however, found beneficial uses of F. auricularia in the pest management of other insects. The European earwig is a natural predator of a number of other agricultural pests, including the pear psyllid and several aphid species, and in this regard has been used to control outbreaks of such organisms. Damage to crops by F. auricularia is limited as long as there are high population levels of their insect prey.
Read more about this topic: Forficula Auricularia
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