Thursday, May 30, 2024

Who We Are.

American Pest Management is Reliable, Responsive, and Responsible. Allow us to develop a solution that will solve your pest problem, protecting you and your family, pets, home, and environment.

American Pest Management, LLC, is a family owned and operated business. Bob and Barbara Weyand started the business in 1980 with the goal to provide realistic solutions to pest control needs while still maintaining a safe environment.

Continuing in this tradition, Bob and Barbara’s son-in-law Jeff Verges took ownership of the company in 2016. His goal is to maintain the same personal experience customers have enjoyed for more than 35 years.

  • Locally Owned and Operated
  • Licensed and Insured in the State of Oregon
  • Reasonable Prices
  • Materials are Safe and Effective
  • No Contracts
  • FREE Estimates
  • Fast and Friendly Service

Providing pest control for your friends and neighbors in the Eugene, Springfield, and surrounding areas for more than 35 years.

We are fully licensed and insured in the state of Oregon. Our prices are reasonable and competitive with fast and friendly service. Call us today for a FREE quote!

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Monday, May 27, 2024

Happy Memorial Day


Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem



Friday, May 24, 2024

Ethical dilemma: Should we get rid of mosquitoes? - Talya Hackett


Explore how the technology of gene drives could lead to the eradication of mosquitoes and what that could mean for our ecosystems.

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Mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths every year than any other animal, but very few of the 3,500 mosquito species actually transmit deadly diseases to humans. Scientists have been conducting experiments using engineered technologies called gene drives that could theoretically get rid of the most lethal mosquitoes. So, should we eradicate these pesky insects? Talya Hackett investigates.

Lesson by Talya Hackett, directed by Luísa M H Copetti, Hype CG.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Hello Ants.

An ant's head contains many sensory organs. Like most insects, ants have compound eyes made from numerous tiny lenses attached together. Ant eyes are good for acute movement detection, but do not offer a high resolution image. They also have three small ocelli (simple eyes) on the top of the head that detect light levels and polarization. Compared to vertebrates, ants tend to have blurrier eyesight, particularly in smaller species, and a few subterranean taxa are completely blind. However, some ants, such as Australia's bulldog ant, have excellent vision and are capable of discriminating the distance and size of objects moving nearly a meter away.

Two antennae ("feelers") are attached to the head; these organs detect chemicals, air currents, and vibrations; they also are used to transmit and receive signals through touch. The head has two strong jaws, the mandibles, used to carry food, manipulate objects, construct nests, and for defence. In some species, a small pocket (infrabuccal chamber) inside the mouth stores food, so it may be passed to other ants or their larvae.

Read more, here.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Saturday, May 18, 2024

Did You Know? Some Bees Have Fur!

Bumblebees vary in appearance, but are generally plump and densely furry. They are larger, broader and stouter-bodied than honeybees, and their abdomen tip is more rounded. Many species have broad bands of colour, the patterns helping to distinguish different species. Whereas honeybees have short tongues and therefore mainly pollinate open flowers, some bumblebee species have long tongues and collect nectar from flowers that are closed into a tube. Bumblebees have fewer stripes (or none), and usually have part of the body covered in black fur, while honeybees have many stripes including several grey stripes on the abdomen. Sizes are very variable even within species; the largest British species, B. terrestris, has queens up to 22 mm (0.9 in) long, males up to 16 mm (0.6 in) long, and workers between 11 and 17 mm (0.4–0.7 in) long. The largest bumblebee species in the world is B. dahlbomii of Chile, up to about 40 mm (1.6 in) long, and described as "flying mice" and "a monstrous fluffy ginger beast".

Read more, here.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Mice 101 - Mice Species Fast Facts and Information


Mice 101 - Fast Facts about Mice and mouse species information
Here are the details on the mouse species, their locations, habitats, diets, predators, mating, and more.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Sunday, May 12, 2024

Happy Mother's Day!


Happy Mother's Day!

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem



Thursday, May 9, 2024

Whats Black and Yellow all Over?

A bumblebee (or bumble bee, bumble-bee, or humble-bee) is any of over 250 species in the genus Bombus, part of Apidae, one of the bee families. This genus is the only extant group in the tribe Bombini, though a few extinct related genera (e.g., Calyptapis) are known from fossils. They are found primarily in higher altitudes or latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, although they are also found in South America, where a few lowland tropical species have been identified. European bumblebees have also been introduced to New Zealand and Tasmania. Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals.

Most bumblebees are social insects that form colonies with a single queen. The colonies are smaller than those of honey bees, growing to as few as 50 individuals in a nest. Cuckoo bumblebees are brood parasitic and do not make nests or form colonies; their queens aggressively invade the nests of other bumblebee species, kill the resident queens and then lay their own eggs, which are cared for by the resident workers. Cuckoo bumblebees were previously classified as a separate genus, but are now usually treated as members of Bombus.

Bumblebees have round bodies covered in soft hair (long branched setae) called 'pile', making them appear and feel fuzzy. They have aposematic (warning) coloration, often consisting of contrasting bands of colour, and different species of bumblebee in a region often resemble each other in mutually protective Müllerian mimicry. Harmless insects such as hoverflies often derive protection from resembling bumblebees, in Batesian mimicry, and may be confused with them. Nest-making bumblebees can be distinguished from similarly large, fuzzy cuckoo bees by the form of the female hind leg. In nesting bumblebees, it is modified to form a pollen basket, a bare shiny area surrounded by a fringe of hairs used to transport pollen, whereas in cuckoo bees, the hind leg is hairy all round, and they never carry pollen.

Like their relatives the honeybees, bumblebees feed on nectar, using their long hairy tongues to lap up the liquid; the proboscis is folded under the head during flight. Bumblebees gather nectar to add to the stores in the nest, and pollen to feed their young. They forage using colour and spatial relationships to identify flowers to feed from. Some bumblebees steal nectar, making a hole near the base of a flower to access the nectar while avoiding pollen transfer. Bumblebees are important agricultural pollinators, so their decline in Europe, North America, and Asia is a cause for concern. The decline has been caused by habitat loss, the mechanisation of agriculture, and pesticides.

Read more, here.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Monday, May 6, 2024

What’s worse than a wasp’s sting? Murder - Miles Zhang


Explore the gruesome evolutionary strategy employed by parasitoid wasps where they feed off other animals to grow their offspring.

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A cockroach and jewel wasp are locked in battle. The wasp latches onto the cockroach and inserts her stinger into the cockroach's brain, where her venom blocks its fight-or-flight response. Now, the cockroach is essentially a zombie, and its carcass will be used to grow the wasp’s offspring. Miles Zhang explores the gruesome evolutionary strategy known as parasitoidism. 

Lesson by Miles Zhang, directed by Denys Spolitak.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem

Friday, May 3, 2024

Feeding, Digestion and Excretion of Spiders

Uniquely among chelicerates, the final sections of spiders' chelicerae are fangs, and the great majority of spiders can use them to inject venom into prey from venom glands in the roots of the chelicerae. The families Uloboridae and Holarchaeidae, and some Liphistiidae spiders, have lost their venom glands, and kill their prey with silk instead. Like most arachnids, including scorpions, spiders have a narrow gut that can only cope with liquid food and two sets of filters to keep solids out. They use one of two different systems of external digestion. Some pump digestive enzymes from the midgut into the prey and then suck the liquified tissues of the prey into the gut, eventually leaving behind the empty husk of the prey. Others grind the prey to pulp using the chelicerae and the bases of the pedipalps, while flooding it with enzymes; in these species, the chelicerae and the bases of the pedipalps form a preoral cavity that holds the food they are processing.

The stomach in the cephalothorax acts as a pump that sends the food deeper into the digestive system. The midgut bears many digestive ceca, compartments with no other exit, that extract nutrients from the food; most are in the abdomen, which is dominated by the digestive system, but a few are found in the cephalothorax.

Most spiders convert nitrogenous waste products into uric acid, which can be excreted as a dry material. Malphigian tubules ("little tubes") extract these wastes from the blood in the hemocoel and dump them into the cloacal chamber, from which they are expelled through the anus. Production of uric acid and its removal via Malphigian tubules are a water-conserving feature that has evolved independently in several arthropod lineages that can live far away from water, for example the tubules of insects and arachnids develop from completely different parts of the embryo. However, a few primitive spiders, the suborder Mesothelae and infraorder Mygalomorphae, retain the ancestral arthropod nephridia ("little kidneys"), which use large amounts of water to excrete nitrogenous waste products as ammonia.

Read more, here.

Jeff Verges/Owner/Operator
742 Santa Anita Court
Eugene, OR 97401

541-688-0580 Eugene 
503-371-8373 Salem