My city is spraying to control the spongy moth outbreak I’m just curious how they make a pesticide that just targets them
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Chemical pesticides don’t target any single organism. They don’t even target small groups of organisms – it’s super common for pesticides to tons of unintended targets in the environment. Birds and amphibians are often very susceptible to pesticides – even if the pesticides are intended for insects, rodents, weeds, etc. Reason being that most pesticides need to work on some sort of biological mechanism that keeps something alive, and pretty much all animals share similar enough biological systems that a pesticide will adversely effect wide ranges of animals. The thing is just that currently approved pesticides generally hurt target pests way worse than unintended targets – but not always.
That all said, your city can target these spongy moth infestations with application. If they’re just applying pesticide where they see the moths (or rather, I assume the larvae aka caterpillars) then they can minimize how much they hurt unintended targets while achieving their objective. If your city is using “integrative pest management” (IPM) practices, then targeted application is probably a part of their program, and should help reduce unintended damages to other animals.
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