RIVERSIDE, CA – Formosan Subterranean Termites (Coptotermes formosanus) continue to be on the radar of pest control professionals in Southern California following confirmation of two more infestations – one from a home in La Verne, Calif., and the other from a home in Hollywood Hills, California. The findings were confirmed by Dr. Chow-Yang Lee and researchers in his lab at the University of California, Riverside Department of Entomology.
As previously reported by PCT, Formosan subterranean termites (FST) are not native to Southern California or the United States. Yet in California they have been confirmed in pockets, and many entomologists and pest control professionals believe they may be underreported in the Golden State.
FST’s recent discovery in La Verne, Calif., came after ProCraft Pest Control, Upland, Calif., was called by one of its customers about a large swarm of termites. It turned out that the swarm came from the next door neighbor’s house. This owner, who owns a lumber business, built his house with many railroad ties. ProCraft owner Mike Furlong speculates that some of the railroad ties may have been transported from a location where subterranean Formosan termites are found.
© Mike Furlong
Furlong was alerted to the potential TSPs by ProCraft Service Technician Luke Miller, who maintains the house. “I decided to send it (to UCR) because it didn’t fit,” Furlong said. “Just a lighter color all over, and it doesn’t suit the dry woods and other submarines we see. And the wings went off. The coloring was off considerably.
Dr. Lee was out of the country, but his lab technician, Sen Miao, performed the measurement and molecular identification. Lee then checked the result of the identification and confirmed that they were Formosan subterranean termites. “Basically what we did was look at the morphology of the sample under a microscope and then do 16S ribosomal RNA analysis,” Lee said.
Furlong said his client’s home was immaculate and also built on a slab (no crawl space), so he found no damage, but that ProCraft will be monitoring this property closely for TSPs in the future.
In addition to the Formosan termites found in La Verne, an infestation of FST was confirmed in a home in Hollywood Hills, California. The termites were sent to UC Riverside by the owner after first being identified by Orkin’s Isela Munoz and then by Orkin Inspector José Ernesto Aguilar. After receiving the sample, Dr. Siavash Taravati from the University of California for Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) visited the house, where he found more dead Formosan termites in the storage area. from the attic. However, no signs of active infestation were evident on visual inspection or when he used Termatrac, a device that detects tiny movements in wood using microwave technology.
“It’s an old all-wood house with termites first found in June 2022 in a loft flying around a lamp post near a storage door,” he said.
Taravati said minor damage was found in the landscape on the buried part of the fence downslope, “but we don’t know if it’s from western subterranean termites or from Formosa. On the upslope, dense cover plants were found but the wooden retaining walls were intact.
The house also has a lot of small damage from drywood termites due to their shape and the presence of hexagonal faecal pellets. »
Taravati added that he inspected the Hollywood Hills home’s crawlspace and found no evidence of FST damage and that nearby landscaped soil was relatively dry, except for a few spots near the sprinklers.
