The Case of the Disappearing Urban Entomologists

By Dan Moreland

With the possible exception of age-defying quarterback Tom Brady, a changing of the guard occurs in every profession. It’s simply a matter of time. And while one of the greatest players in the history of the NFL may have unlocked the secrets of the “Fountain of Youth,” even Brady’s time will come.

That time, however, already may have arrived for the structural pest control industry, and specifically, the field of urban entomology, which has seen a mass exodus of high-profile industry figures who have devoted their professional lives to supporting PMPs with valuable pest identification services, groundbreaking research and countless continuing education opportunities, enhancing the professionalism of the industry in the process.

A partial list of relatively recent retirees reads like a “Who’s Who” of urban entomology: Philip Koehler, University of Florida; Michael Rust, University of California, Riverside; Susan Jones, The Ohio State University; Michael Potter, University of Kentucky; Shripat Kamble, University of Nebraska; Vernard Lewis, University of California, Berkeley; Roger Gold, Texas A&M University; Gary Bennett, Purdue University; and Patricia Zungoli, Clemson University.

"The list goes on and on,” says Dr. Dan Suiter, extension entomologist at the University of Georgia and a proud graduate of Koehler’s entomology program at the University of Florida, where he cut his teeth under the legendary educator. And there appears to be no end in sight, with another wave of academics approaching retirement age in the not-too-distant future, potentially reducing the industry’s access to an entire generation’s collective entomological wisdom.

The one-two punch of these high-profile departures are setting off alarm bells among many in the industry, including members of Pi Chi Omega, the professional fraternity originally founded on “furthering the science of pest control.” ¹

¹ Source: Pi Chi Omega website. Pi Chi Omega was established in 1950 with the stated mission of “furthering the science of pest control.” In June of 2017, the fraternity adopted a new mission to “connect and enrich the urban pest management community.”

Unfortunately, it will be increasingly difficult to achieve that goal if the brain drain of urban entomologists continues unabated in the years to come. “I have witnessed the slow decay of extension entomologists and faculty positions devoted to applied entomology,” observes Dr. Michael Rust, distinguished professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside.

“Many of the positions that have helped support the industry are not being replaced,” adds Dr. Philip Koehler, professor emeritus at the University of Florida/IFAS Department of Entomology and Nematology. “Few of the replacements have a knowledge of the industry or work directly with the industry.”

Such developments are raising grave concerns among a growing number of those in academia as well as rank-and-file members of the industry who rely on university educators and extension personnel to perform critical tasks essential to the success of PMPs.

So, how did we get here?

A LOOK BACK. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when urban entomology found itself on the cusp of a “golden age.” The origins of the field’s renaissance began in 1970 when President Richard Nixon signed an executive order creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Suddenly, the market for university-trained entomologists specializing in the “built environment” exploded. Dr. Roger Gold, who managed one of the leading entomology programs in the nation at Texas A&M University before retiring in 2015, says urban entomology owes much of its current stature to “the formation of the EPA,” which forever changed the regulatory landscape of the pest control industry.

Up until that time, the industry was a mixed bag of PMPs who relied on a fixed spray schedule to treat homes and businesses, along with more forward-leaning PMPs devoted to a prescriptive approach to pest control, including the latest IPM techniques. And while individual states had long provided education and training to PMPs during this era, there was significant variability among these offerings.

However, when FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) was amended in 1972, transferring the responsibility for regulating pesticides from the Department of Agriculture to EPA, the demand for educating PMPs and consumers in proper pesticide use grew exponentially, resulting in an increase in the number of educators required for training.

“A lot of the training went to the extension service, and there weren’t sufficient extension personnel to provide both private and professional training, so some of us were hired to develop these training programs,” Gold recalls. “That led to a lot of people being hired, essentially serving as de facto members of university faculty.”

Industry consultant Stoy Hedges, who studied under Gary Bennett at Purdue before embarking on a successful career of his own, says he feels fortunate to have worked in the golden era of urban entomology.

“During the 1970s and ’80s, the Purdue Entomology Department graduated a dozen or more high-profile industry technical directors, extension entomologists, manufacturer representatives and pest control business owners,” he says, including such well-known names as Bobby Corrigan, Mike Merchant, David Mueller, Gene White, Tom Myers, Stephen Kells, Mike Scharf and Kathy Heinsohn.

“As I near retirement, I have wondered who in the younger generation will step up and make their mark on the pest control industry,” Hedges says. “Observationally, it seems that most of the speakers at various conferences still tend to be the older urban entomology crowd with a few of the next generation participating.”

Suiter agrees. “A lot has changed in the past 10 to 15 years, with most of the old guard beginning to retire,” he says. “And since they were all the same cohort, they seemed to have aged out quite suddenly.”

Even more concerning, “It doesn’t feel like rehires are keeping pace,” Suiter adds. And in those cases where new blood is being infused into urban entomology programs, “they’re of a different cloth than those folks who’ve recently retired.”

That “different cloth” can be anything from faculty members with expertise in scientific disciplines only indirectly related to urban entomology to entomology departments being re-imagined to better align with today’s academic realities.

Courtesy of University of Georgia

COMPETING FORCES. One such academic reality is “entomology departments are disappearing or being merged into larger departments that are more oriented toward crop protection,” observes Dr. Coby Schal, who oversees one of the most robust urban entomology programs in the country at North Carolina State University.

As the footprint of entomology departments across the country shrinks, programs within these departments have a “high probability” of suffering a similar fate if they don’t receive sufficient stakeholder support, according to Dr. Faith Oi, extension associate professor of urban entomology, University of Florida. She points to the ESA’s Council of Entomology Department Administrators (CEDA) — an organization established to promote the field of entomology — to make her point.

Oi says a number of entomology departments across the country have merged with other academic disciplines, reducing university programs that may have been focused exclusively on urban entomology in the past. A quick scan of CEDA membership illustrates this point:

• Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, Auburn University
• Department of Plant & Environmental Protection Sciences, University of Hawai’i
• Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, Oklahoma State University
• Department of Entomology, Soils & Plant Sciences, Clemson University
• Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, University of Tennessee
• Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University

As a result, “we may be headed toward departments or colleges of ag that serve needs regionally,” Suiter observes. “Auburn, Clemson, NC State and Tennessee departments of entomology have merged with plant pathology, so they are no longer standalone entomology departments. When this happens, entomology loses something.”

“Even the most successful urban entomology programs can become marginal in such units because they rarely deal with plants,” Schal adds. “Departmental priorities shift, and upon retirement of urban entomologists, positions can get reallocated to other disciplines.”

In such instances, even endowed positions can be diminished without some level of intervention by higher-ranking university administrators or those who have led efforts to fund endowed chairs. 

Courtesy of PCT archives

“I say all this to highlight the idea that we’ll see more and more academics outside of the field of urban entomology compete for urban entomology endowed positions,” Schal says. “I expect that they might even have an advantage over urban entomologists if they show evidence of federal grant support and appeal to a broader, plant-based department.”

Dr. Eric Benson, professor emeritus and extension entomologist at Clemson University, agrees with Schal’s assessment. “When urban entomology faculty leave or retire, it’s not unusual for university administrators to reallocate the funding to an entirely different program/mission,” he observes. “To reduce this trend, I think more fully endowed urban entomology positions will be needed at land grant universities that have entomology departments or programs. At Clemson, we have been informed that to fully endow a faculty position into perpetuity, a corpus of $5 million is needed today.”

That’s a tall order and another way of saying to obtain a comprehensive picture of the state of urban entomology, PMPs must follow the money. But to do that, one must first understand how urban entomology programs have traditionally been funded, which requires a trip back to the future.

EPA REDUX. In addition to supercharging the need for pesticide education and training, the creation of the EPA more than five decades ago provided countless research opportunities for universities funding urban entomology programs. That’s because EPA officials tasked with registering the flood of new pesticides entering the marketplace in the post-chlordane era “requested” that manufacturers provide ancillary research of these products to ensure their efficacy.

“My first year out of school, I was involved in this new product work since the industry wanted to know how long they would last in real-world situations, and they wanted that data from respected third-party sources,” Gold recalls.

In other instances, manufacturers supplemented in-house research by contracting with universities to perform independent research of pesticide formulations containing these new active ingredients (AIs), thereby enhancing the data package they would ultimately submit to EPA. The result was a steady stream of revenue from product suppliers hoping to expand their footprint in the pest control market.

However, applied research doesn’t come cheap. With graduate student stipends in the $25,000- to $40,000-per-year range and the high cost of operating a fully staffed entomology lab, university faculty found themselves spending an inordinate amount of time fundraising — writing grant proposals, courting foundations, responding to research requests from manufacturers, etc.

“It’s very costly to run an urban entomology program,” Suiter says. “Your readers may be shocked to learn that students pursuing a master’s or Ph.D. are actually paid by their professors to go to school, meaning a professor might have $75,000 to well over $100,000 wrapped up in a single student by the time they complete their studies.

“And none of this money is handed to the professor by the state or college of ag, or the entomology department where they reside,” he adds. “Each professor has to raise the money to pay the student, and we all have our creative ways on how to get this done. I don’t mean this to be a ‘feel sorry for us’ statement; it’s just meant to dispel a myth that some might have that we’re all swimming in handouts.”

To make matters even more challenging, for those faculty members concurrently pursuing tenure-track positions, the daily rigors of academic scholarship — including publishing research in peer-reviewed journals — is added to an already long list of mind-numbing job responsibilities.

Why is tenure so important for the academic community? Not only does being awarded tenure provide long-term financial and career stability, but it also gives university educators the necessary career “runway” to build and/or expand robust urban entomology programs like those led by Roger Gold, Michael Potter, Gary Bennett, Michael Rust and Philip Koehler, all of whom have retired or taken on emeritus roles in recent years.

FLY IN THE OINTMENT. That career runway, however, encountered some unexpected twists when manufacturer research funding — often referred to as “soft funding” — took a major hit in the late 1990s and early 2000s as pesticide manufacturers began to consolidate in response to the high cost of discovering, formulating, registering and marketing new AIs.

“Mergers over the past two decades have left us with fewer industry supporters,” observes Dr. Brian Forschler, who has spent 31 years as the principal investigator for the Household and Structural Entomology Research Program at the University of Georgia.

“The research I did throughout my career was funded by the industry, but we had about 20 manufacturers pumping dollars specifically into structural research (in the 1970s and ’80s), whereas today there are three companies that look at entomology from a different perspective — a global perspective where urban pest management represents a relatively small share of their market as compared to the large share agriculture represents,” he says.

“The bottom line is that very few university research programs today get a major proportion of their funding from the manufacturer community,” Forschler adds. “Those funds have disappeared and so the practitioner community (PMPs) needs to take care of itself right now.”

Complicating matters even further, following a merger or acquisition, manufacturers often shed employees with redundant job responsibilities, putting urban entomologists “on the street” and prompting increased competition for already declining research dollars, Suiter observes.

“I can think off the top of my head of six or so very successful independent labs whose founder used to work for the basic manufacturer they are now doing contract work for,” he says. “This cut further into the soft money dollars that were available to professors.”

INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES. If such external factors weren’t enough to put those tasked with leading urban entomology programs on their heels during a time of significant industry change, program administrators also began experiencing various internal challenges during this period, most notably from university administrators largely disconnected from the front lines of the industry.

“During my career, I brought in $20 million in research and building funds … and a significant portion of those funds came from industry,” Gold says. “But those types of funds weren’t recognized by many institutions because they came from industry,” a common criticism validated by Suiter.

“Industry funding sources are not viewed favorably by administration because they are typically small (less than $20,000) and not considered scholarly,” he says. “University administration looks down at such ‘paltry’ income, even if it does sustain an independent research or extension program completely free of taxpayer dollars.”

“I always thought money was money, regardless of where it came from,” argues Gold, “but the grant-in-aid money that went into applied research wasn’t always treated with the same respect as money from other sources at these institutions. They (university administrators) wanted you to get NSF (National Science Foundation) grants or other governmental grants (USDA, NIH) rather than relying on industry.”

Dr. Dini Miller’s experience at Virginia Tech, where she leads the Dodson Urban Pest Management Laboratory, which was established in 1990 through funds donated by the Virginia Pest Management Association, is more common than anyone would like to admit.

“I spoke with a high-level administrator here in late 2017,” she recalls. “He said, ‘The people who care about bed bugs are those who have bed bugs.’ He was oblivious to the pest control industry’s interest in bed bug management. In fact, he was underinformed about the industry in general because he did not recognize it as a funding source. It’s important to recognize that the traditional relationships between PMPs and universities have faded; college administrators have grown accustomed to working with agricultural producers (that regularly provide funding to the university), but they are largely unaware of the needs of urban pest management. Unless these relationships are re-established, academia will leave urban pest management behind.”

Not surprisingly, this disconnect is primarily a result of funding disparities. “Our programs are overshadowed by agriculture programs, which consistently bring in large-scale grants,” observes Miller. “A single agriculture research project can pull in a $3 million grant. In comparison, our urban pest management team is more likely to work with individual chemical manufacturers, whose budgets are roughly $8,000 to $20,000 per project. We do maybe 11 of these a year. We bring in enough to support our programs, but those big research programs net 61 percent overhead for the university. It’s understandable that they seem far more attractive to administrators.”

Unfortunately, urban pest management isn’t a magnet for big grant money. Rust says that when he joined the faculty of UC Riverside in 1975, 90 percent of the 40 faculty members were engaged in integrated pest management. Now, of the 28 faculty members who remain, only two or three are doing applied research.

“That’s not enough here in Southern California, where we get one or two major invasive pests each year,” he says. “But the university doesn’t take that into account: They make decisions about programs and faculty based on the amount of funding that comes in from NIH (National Institutes of Health), NSF and other big funding agencies.”

Courtesy of PCT archives

Even at the federal level, however, funding is not without its challenges. “First, the USDA does not have funds established for entomologists working in the built (structural pest control) environment,” Forschler observes, just agricultural and forestry-based positions.

The one exception was the USDA termiticide research center in Gulfport, Miss., which provided valuable data on the performance of both currently available termiticides and products under development. Unfortunately, even this high-profile program was “gutted and decommissioned” when its mission was determined to be “outside the mainstream role of the Forest Service,” Forschler says.

EXTENSION SUPPORT. Although federal funding remains a concern, it’s the waning support for cooperative extension that most concerns Miller. While land grant universities historically addressed research, teaching and extension equally, she says, that’s no longer the case today, with extension and, to some degree, teaching, taking a back seat. And while she understands the need for laboratory-based genetic research that generates overhead funding, working side by side with PMPs in the field is vital to achieving practical advances in pest management.

Rust agrees. “Funding issues have caused a definite decline in structural entomology research and extension work at UC Riverside as well as many other colleges across the U.S.,” he says. “The pest control industry might not be feeling the full effects of this yet, but it will unless someone steps forward to put pressure on state and local agencies to increase educational funding for these programs.”

ADAPT OR DIE. In the midst of such a challenging fiscal climate, the industry’s options are limited, but like the insects they are tasked to control, a broad coalition of industry stakeholders has learned to adapt to survive, pursuing a strategy of creating endowed chairs to preserve and expand urban entomology programs throughout the United States.

It’s a strategy that has proven largely successful but is not without limitations. Rust’s experience at the multi-campus University of California system is an example. “The only thing that saved my faculty position was the efforts of about eight industry members, an endowed research fund that I established in 1995 and funding from the UC President’s Office to establish the endowed chairs on campuses,” he recalls.

“Otherwise, my position would not have been replaced,” Rust says, putting at risk a legacy of achievement with roots stretching all the way back to the 1930s when Dr. Walter Ebeling — widely regarded as the “father of urban entomology” — began his career at the Riverside Citrus Experiment Station, later to become the University of California, Riverside.

Texas A&M’s Dr. Ed Vargo adds that establishing endowed chairs is a good start, helping to create “stability by ensuring that departments will continue to hire faculty working in urban entomology,” but more is required to protect the long-term viability of these positions.

“I think we need to make university administrators — department heads and deans — aware of the opportunities in urban entomology for students so that they will retain current faculty lines or add new ones in urban entomology,” he says.

While endowments play a critical role in preserving urban entomology positions at universities across the U.S., Miller says how those funds are used must be carefully spelled out and monitored to produce the greatest bang for the industry’s buck.

She points out that most industry endowments are based on the desire to support faculty positions that will conduct applied research with practical benefits for PMPs. Once the funding is committed, however, the position focus may change, with a greater emphasis on NIH, USDA and NSF molecular research funding.

Courtesy of PCT archives

“When a donor funds an endowed faculty position, the university will tend toward making that a basic research position rather than one that includes applied work in the field,” she explains. “Working on the genomics of the bed bug is important, but if we’re going to develop new chemistries and treatment protocols that work, we also need to get out there into the apartment complexes where these pests live and do the hands-on research so vital to success.”

That hands-on research requires funding which, unfortunately, is in short supply at the moment, according to Dr. Vernard Lewis, emeritus cooperative extension specialist, University of California, Berkeley. “Financial support of urban entomology is varied but underfunded — (there are) several endowed chairs, donor gifts, and for a few states, PMP industry research support via a ‘self-tax,’” he says. “However, to support the growing needs for urban pest management programs, more is needed.”

DEEPER ISSUES. Some argue, however, that the challenges associated with recruiting and retaining the next generation of urban entomologists goes far beyond issues of research funding or ivory tower politics, but are instead rooted in how the field is perceived nationally.

“We have an identity crisis,” Oi says bluntly, pointing to her own experience attending the University of Florida’s “Preview” orientation session, where she discovered entomology is a found major. “Very few students are admitted with entomology as a declared major,” she says. And that doesn’t just apply to undergraduate students, but graduate students as well. “The pipeline is broken,” Oi adds, a sentiment shared by Benson.

“Many decisions about which programs to fund are driven by undergraduate student enrollments, which, in turn, are driven by student interest in specific degree programs; few students come in seeking degrees in urban entomology,” he observes.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. “From my experience, pre-med students, biologists, mathematicians and engineering majors all have strong science and mathematical skills to succeed and excel in urban entomological careers,” Lewis observes. “I was pleased to see several of my former students going on to careers as PMPs, academia and government jobs related to urban and medical entomology.”

“I think there could be many students that could be informed, and thus, attracted to urban entomology, but with the lack of/decrease in urban entomology programs at land grant universities, we don’t have the personnel to educate and recruit new students,” Benson warns.

The result is a “damaging cycle of diminishing interest, education and resources,” he says. “When I give guest lectures or training related to urban entomology, it is not unusual for potential students to ask me about graduate programs at Clemson, but Clemson can no longer accommodate them due to lack of faculty.”

It’s a classic catch-22 situation. As the national footprint of urban entomology programs shrinks, the number of students dedicated to this important discipline declines proportionately, resulting in an ever-decreasing number of industry advocates promoting careers in urban entomology.

“For the short term, this means we will gradually have fewer and fewer people generating new information about pest biology and management,” Vargo observes. “Over the long term, it means there will be only a few people with deep knowledge about the biology and management of urban pests, but also fewer faculty training new students, which will cause a downward spiral with increasingly fewer trained scientists working in our field.”

“The bright side of the current situation is that the pest control industry has influence they don’t know they have,” Suiter says. “College administrators, especially college of ag deans, listen to commodity groups. And the pest control industry is a powerful commodity group.

“A concerted, organized, persistent effort by the pest control industry” to inform college deans of the importance of supporting the pest control industry “goes a long way” to acquiring and maintaining positions at the university level, he says. “Deans listen to their stakeholders.”

Courtesy of University of California, Berkely

While legitimately concerned, Oi also is “encouraged” by the recent spate of high-profile urban entomology hires around the country, including the additions of Scotty Yang (Virginia Tech), Sydney Crawley (North Carolina State University), Jia-Wei Tay (University of Hawai’i), Zach DeVries (University of Kentucky), Chow-Yang Lee (University of California, Riverside) and Michael Scharf (University of Florida) to the ranks of urban entomologists in high-profile positions.

Yet, even with these additions, it’s still difficult for university educators dedicated to urban entomology to meet the growing demand for their services. “The industry has grown, and clientele need from the public has increased significantly, while resources have not,” Oi says. “There are simply not enough positions and resources allocated to supporting the industry that is commensurate with its growth.”

WHAT CAN PMPs DO? What can the industry do to reverse some of these damaging trends? First, the industry must aggressively hire and promote urban entomologists, ensuring they ascend to high-profile positions in organizations across North America, including leading pest control firms, global chemical companies, distributors, trade associations, etc.

Second, the industry must continue to lobby on behalf of urban entomology. “The establishment of faculty positions, including extension positions, is the long-term solution to the decline,” according to Rust, but it requires an aggressive lobbying effort by those committed to the cause.

“I know the industry supports legislative days to impact laws and regulations,” he says. “Concerted lobbying efforts at the state and federal levels can impact the programmatic decisions being made at the university level.”

Third, the industry must promote the broad-based financial benefits of urban entomology programs at academic institutions, even if these programs are currently under significant financial pressure or are less visible/influential than they once were.

“As with most entomology departments, which are traditionally in colleges of agriculture at land-grant institutions, their administrators will realize having a program that addresses the needs of the pest management industry will provide a new source of funding and future gifts or endowments,” Forschler says. “The pest management industry can help those causes by remaining active in political arenas at both the state and national levels to get that message into those respective funding streams.” 

Courtesy of Virginia tech and Coby Schal

Fourth, the industry must think outside the box when identifying ways to recruit and retain the next generation of urban entomologists. Lewis suggests a good place to start is “increasing the number of PMP academies/training centers and certificate programs; incorporating PMPs as instructors in university curricula; and creating student field internships with PMP companies and government agencies.”

Fifth, the industry must continue to support the contributions of cooperative extension, while strengthening the industry’s ties with this important stakeholder group, resulting in a mutually beneficial give-and-take between PMPs and cooperative extension service personnel.

In the land-grant system, “research should be driven by stakeholder needs, and strong extension programs are research-based,” Oi observes. “Those who do extension [work] have a passion for their clientele. We need to share our enthusiasm for all this industry does to protect human and environmental health.”

Within the university system, she adds, extension programs are prioritized based on stakeholder need. In Florida, there are hundreds of commodity groups vying for university administration’s attention. “We need a unified voice of PMPs to let university administrators know that the discipline of structural pest management and cooperative extension services are crucial to the industry,” Oi says.

© Christin Lola | AdobeStock

And last but not least, the industry must continue to support the creation of endowed chairs to ensure a steady flow of funding to these essential industry assets. “Help us create endowments that directly support the industry” and “lobby for recurring lines of support at the state and federal levels,” Oi urges. “This is a critical step to keep the urban entomology pipeline full of qualified people dedicated to the structural pest control industry.”

THE FUTURE. While it’s undeniable that entomology positions are no longer as prevalent as they once were, it doesn’t mean there aren’t ample opportunities for entomologists to make a positive difference in the industry.

Gold says the pipeline of entomologists has shifted. Today, an entomologist graduating from a university is more likely to enter industry than academia or the cooperative extension service. “There are still a lot of positions for urban entomologists, but they’re not in the university system,” he says. “The industry doesn’t depend much on the universities for these types of services (technician training, applied research, etc.) any longer.”

A MIXED BAG. Given the challenging market realities, is there still reason for optimism? Forschler thinks so. “I have always been a fan of the industry and the way they figure out what works for their business,” he observes. “I think in the short term, the industry will find fewer university-affiliated urban entomologists, but that trend will swing back once the USDA realizes that most voters live in the built environment and are largely urban constituents. I don’t think a few less urban entomologists will make that much of an impact on the industry in the long term.”

Koehler and Benson aren’t so sure, however. “Ten years from now, the relationship between university urban entomologists and the pest management industry will be different,” Koehler says. “The newer professors do not have the experience to work in a meaningful way with the industry. Administrators do not reward that kind of collaboration. So consequently, the relationship that has existed in the past will change, with fewer entomologists available to assist the industry as a whole.”

Courtesy of PCT archives

“I am currently pessimistic in the short term for urban entomology,” Benson adds, “but I still hold some optimism for the long term,” as evidenced by his ongoing commitment to fund an endowed chair in urban entomology at Clemson.

“If I wasn’t somewhat optimistic, I would stop my efforts,” he says. “I hope someday the pest management industry and the people they serve will influence government officials and university administrators as to the important synergism between the industry and university programs in the mission of protecting human health and property.”

And should the industry fail in connecting those dots, perhaps as a last resort it can reach out to Tom Brady in an attempt to unlock the secrets of perpetual youth, thereby preserving the current generation of entomologists until market conditions change or the industry’s messaging falls upon more receptive ears. In the meantime, it’s up to all of the industry’s stakeholders to ensure the conversation continues. The very future of urban entomology may depend on it.

The author is publisher emeritus of PCT.

How Do PMPs View the Contributions of Urban Entomologists?

The most valued offerings mirror those historically provided by cooperative extension service personnel throughout the United States.

If new research from PCT magazine is any indication, pest management professionals consider the contributions of urban entomologists critical to the success of the industry, making the decline in urban entomology funding even more disconcerting for those concerned about the long-term viability of the field.

According to a PCT survey conducted in May of this year, 65 percent of respondents said entomologists have played an “essential role” in the success of the pest control industry, with an additional 23 percent saying they have played a “modest role.” A much smaller percentage said entomologists have played an “essential” (39 percent) or “modest” (31 percent) role in the success of their business.

In terms of the most valued services offered by university-based entomology programs, survey respondents said continuing education tops the list at 87 percent, followed by insect identification services (73 percent); providing speakers for pest control meetings (50 percent); writing articles for industry trade magazines (25 percent); and third-party research (24 percent). Interestingly, the most popular offerings mirror those historically provided by the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service.

While some of the industry’s largest companies employ entomologists full-time, most firms access the expertise of these experts via a variety of means, most notably at industry pest control conferences (49 percent); through state or local pest control association relationships (30 percent); and when interacting with cooperative extension service offices (29 percent).

Not surprisingly, given the financial and institutional pressures higher education finds itself under, six out of 10 survey respondents are either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the future viability of university-based urban entomology programs serving the structural pest control industry.

Data for the survey was collected from 103 respondents via a Readex Research online survey from May 10-25.

Charts may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.