University Honors

In recent years bed bugs have become a pest of interest due to their increasing populations. This, and bed bugs' increased pesticide resistance, requires development of new control strategies. Insect pathogenic fungi, specifically Beauveria bassiana and essential oils like citronella are both promising biopesticide products that could prove effective and environmentally friendly. Experiments using biopesticides in the past have shown that the environment they are used in can have a significant impact on how effective they are against the chosen insect. So we used laboratory bioassays with B. bassiana and citronella oil products to evaluate their efficacy against bed bugs in different environments. In these bioassays, we found that of the two commercial products used, Naturganic did have a statistically significant impact on the bed bug mortality, and BotaniGard did not.