Doomsday for Vermin

Q. If I could snap my fingers and make every rat, cockroach and bedbug disappear from New York City, would that be a good thing, ecologically speaking?

A. “We would avoid the diseases, bites and frightful moments that they bring to our lives,” said Dr. Steven N. Handel, professor of ecology and evolution at Rutgers University, but problems might result from the emergence of other species to fill their niches in cleaning up human leftovers.

Like many of New York City’s people and weeds, many of its pests came from other continents, including bedbugs, cockroaches and European rats. In fact, Dr. Handel said, concentrations of people “are the ground zero of the pest explosion,” providing both warm shelter and garbage to feed upon.

Dr. Handel said that the disappearance of bedbugs would probably leave no serious bad consequences but that eliminating some of the other vermin might mean “simply exchanging one suite of kitchen crashers for another, albeit smaller and less visually frightening.”

Microbes are everywhere and carry their own public health problems, he continued.

“If it’s goodbye cockroaches, then it’s hello fungi,” Dr. Handel suggested. “We will never be alone.”

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