Long-tailed silverfish – Biology and control
Report
|Published
This document, produced by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in collaboration with Norsk Hussopp Forsikring, summarises the level of knowledge in 2019
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Summary
NIPH acts under the Health and Care Ministry of Norway as a national competence institution for governmental authorities, the health service, the judiciary, prosecuting authorities, politicians, the media and the public independent of commercial interests. The principle of substitution is a recurring theme in the management of and research on urban pests in Norway. It states that preventive and control measures must be carried out in an efficient way, but also pose the least possible harm on human health and the environment. Therefore, it is imperative to promote least-toxic methods as an alternative to pesticide use in indoor environments – it is indeed an important public health topic. The Department of Pest Control at NIPH is the national competence centre for prevention and control of indoors pests.
The long-tailed silverfish has shown a considerable increase in Norway the last years without any apparently good explanation. A sensible initial approach is to summarize the current level of knowledge of this species through a literature review to illuminate its strengths and weaknesses, and to identify potential control options.
The present review is part of a larger project that aims to develop control- and management routines for the long-tailed silverfish. This species is clearly understudied and all scientific literature identified under the species name Ctenolepisma longicaudata in the literature databases Web of Science, SCOPUS and PUBMED have been reviewed. Additionally, the literature list of all these papers have been used to find older, non-searchable literature. Chosen scientific publications on the related, indoor species the common silverfish (Lepisma saccharina), the firebrat (Thermobia domestica) and the four-lined silverfish (Ctenolepisma lineata) have also been conferred as extended references for control and behaviour, and to enlighten biological aspects not yet studied in the long-tailed silverfish. The literature review is available at www.fhi.no free of charge. This is the second version, the first edition was published in 2018 (only in Norwegian). It is likely that updates will occur regularly as we expect new knowledge regarding control to become available. It is considered important to get such information to the pest control companies and their technicians.
