Pestology Blog
2025: A Pestology Year in Review
Fairfax, VA – December 1, 2025
Stats, Highlights, and More!
What a year its been for NPMA BugBytes and our Pestology Blog! Since January 2025, we have released 11 episodes and their corresponding article summaries here. With three articles each episode, that means we brought you 33 new discoveries in pest control science this year. Amongst these episodes, we got to know 13 special guest stars and how they have impacted the pest control industry. While our pestology summaries don't go in depth on our guest stars, our episodes spend some quality time getting to know them and their companies.
Each episode, we each get to choose our article based on whatever we deem most interesting that month. Over the course of the year, that means we covered a lot of different topics. For anyone interested in the stats on this, here you are!
Our most popular topic was mosquitos, with 6 different articles about these public health pests getting chosen. Second place was a three way tie between cockroaches, bed bugs, and ants which each got discussed 4 times. The list continued with 3 termite topics, and 9 other topics covered in varying amounts. In the episode, we debate why mosquitos were such a hot topic, and while there is no full answer, it feels fair that the most deadly animal in the world got more of a spotlight.
There are so many pest species that PMPs face and across our 14 topics covered, we hope you learned something this year about pests you work with or even ones that you don't see often. If you want to check out these topics, listen to an episode you missed, or just catch up on the written summaries, we welcome you to check out this year's posts on our blog homepage.
In 11 episodes, we all had some wins, losses, and of course favorite papers. We each went back through our article and picked our favorites.
Ellie's favorite:
What you eat is what we need: using ants to detect spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) DNA. Authors: Wei-Jiun Lin, Fang-Ling Chloe Liu, Xun-Yi Huang, Alejandro I. Del Pozo-Valdivia, Tracy C. Leskey, Chin-Cheng Scotty Yang. Journal: Pest Management Science. 24 April 2025.
Check out my summary in our September episode here.
Laura's favorite:
Maternal care thwarts parasitoids in the invasive brown widow spider (Latrodectus geometricus). Authors: Rozenberg T, Lubin Y, Segoli M, Mowery MA. 2025 Journal: Proc. R. Soc. B 292: 20242735.
Check out her summary in our August episode here.
Mike's favorite:
How to give a spider a heart attack: Evaluating cardiac stress reactions of Trichonephila and Argiope spiders. Authors: Andrew K. Davis and Christina Vu; Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA Journal: Royal Entomology Society’s Journal of Physiological Entomology
Check out his summary in our February episode here.
After all was said and done, our big winner of the year was Laura! Not only did she have the most episode wins, she also won our special pest news trivia game in our final episode of the year.
We hope you enjoyed this year's episodes and write ups and wish you all a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season! NPMA BugBytes will return in January with a new episode to kick off another great year in pest control science.
Article by: Ellie Sanders, BCE
Listen to the Episode!
Have questions or feedback for the BugBytes team? Email us at training@pestworld.org, we'd love to hear from you!
