First Study of Arthropods in U.S. Homes Finds Huge Biodiversity

For Immediate Release

马特·贝托 matt_bertone@ncsu.edu 919.515.9530

Michelle Trautwein mtrautwein@calacademy.org 415.379.5323

Matt Shipman matt_shipman@ncsu.edu 919.515.6386

The first study to evaluate the biodiversity of arthropods in U.S. homes finds that humans share their houses with any of more than 500 different kinds of arthropods – at least on a short-term basis. Arthropods are invertebrate animals with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed limbs, such as insects, spiders, mites and centipedes.

“This was exploratory work to help us get an understanding of which arthropods are found in our homes,” says Matt Bertone, an entomologist at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper describing the work. “Nobody had done an exhaustive inventory like this one, and we found that our homes host far more biodiversity than most people would expect.” The work was done by researchers at NC State, the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Under an initiative called the “Arthropods of Our Homes”研究人员在2012年5月至10月之间访问了50座独立式房屋。2012年5月至10月，在北卡罗来纳州罗利市30英里内。研究小组乘房间，研究小组收集了它可以找到的所有节肢动物，无论是生活还是死亡。

Across all 50 homes, the researchers identified no fewer than 579 different morphospecies of arthropod from 304 different families. Individual homes had, on average, about 100 morphospecies (between 32 and 211) and between 24 and 128 distinct families. The most commonly collected groups of arthropods in the homes were flies, spiders, beetles, ants and book lice. The term morphospecies is used to characterize animal types that are readily separable by morphological differences that are obvious to individuals without extensive taxonomic training.

“While we collected a remarkable diversity of these creatures, we don’t want people to get the impression that all of these species are actually living in everyone’s homes,” Bertone says. “Many of the arthropods we found had clearly wandered in from outdoors, been brought in on cut flowers or were otherwise accidentally introduced. Because they’re not equipped to live in our homes, they usually die pretty quickly.”

For example, researchers found gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) in all 50 homes. But these millimeter-long flies feed on outdoor plants and can’t survive indoors.

“The vast majority of the arthropods we found in homes were not pest species,” Bertone says. “They were either peaceful cohabitants – like the cobweb spiders (Theridiidae) found in 65 percent of all rooms sampled – or accidental visitors, like midges and leafhoppers (Cicadellidae).”

One of the findings that surprised researchers was that only five of the 554 rooms they sampled did not contain any arthropod specimens.

“我们认为我们的房屋是无菌环境，但事实并非如此，”贝托说。“我们与许多不同的物种共享我们的空间，其中大多数是良性的。您不知道他们在那里的事实仅突显了我们与他们互动的很少。”

这项研究可能会为新的科学探究线打开大门。

“这只是对生活在我们家中的物种的第一次瞥见，需要做更多的工作才能充实这张照片，” CAS学的Schlinger主席米歇尔·特拉特韦因（Michelle Trautwein）说。“但是这些见解使我们的机会深入研究了一些令人兴奋的科学问题。现在，我们对哪些物种在家庭中最常见的种类有了更好的了解，我们可以专注于研究它们。

“他们是否提供了我们在房屋生态系统中不知道的重要服务？无论好坏，是否有任何影响我们健康的宿主微生物生物？我们还可以开始探索他们的特征，看看它们是否具有进化特征，使他们更适合与人类生活。”

“We also plan to assess how a home’s structure, its outdoor environment, and the behavior of its human residents influences the biodiversity of arthropods in the home,” Bertone says.

The paper, “大室内的节肢动物：描述城市和郊区房屋内的多样性,” is published in the journalPeerJ。该论文由NC State的Keith Bayless和Rob Dunn合着；Cas的Misha Leong；和北卡罗来纳州自然科学博物馆的塔拉·马洛（Tara Malow）。这项工作得到了国家科学基金会根据1257960和0953350的支持。

-shipman-

Note to Editors:The study abstract follows.

“节肢动物的室内:描述diversity inside urban and suburban homes”

Authors：Matthew A. Bertone，Keith M. Bayless和北卡罗来纳州立大学的Robert R. Dunn；Misha Leong和Michelle D. Trautwein，加利福尼亚科学院；和北卡罗来纳州自然科学博物馆的塔拉L.F. Malow

Published: Jan. 19,PeerJ

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.1582

文摘:虽然人类和节肢动物living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, USA). We discovered high diversity, with a conservative estimate range of 32–211 morphospecies, and 24–128 distinct arthropod families per house. The majority of this indoor diversity (73%) was made up of true flies (Diptera), spiders (Araneae), beetles (Coleoptera), and wasps and kin (Hymenoptera, especially ants: Formicidae). Much of the arthropod diversity within houses did not consist of synanthropic species, but instead included arthropods that were filtered from the surrounding landscape. As such, common pest species were found less frequently than benign species. Some of the most frequently found arthropods in houses, such as gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and book lice (Liposcelididae), are unfamiliar to the general public despite their ubiquity. These findings present a new understanding of the diversity, prevalence, and distribution of the arthropods in our daily lives. Considering their impact as household pests, disease vectors, generators of allergens, and facilitators of the indoor microbiome, advancing our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of arthropods in homes has major economic and human health implications.