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Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Do Chestnut, Lemon, or Peppermint Scents Repel Spiders?

Entomology Today

The internet suffers no lack of suggestions for methods to repel common household pests, and that sheer volume of claims makes scientific testing of such repellents all the more valuable.

Entomologists, of course, are here to help. Adding to a long line of tests on all varieties of household pest repellents, a new study published in December in the Journal of Economic Entomology puts three natural compounds to the test for their efficacy in repelling spiders......Results were mixed: Both chestnut and peppermint oil showed apparent repellent effects on Latrodectus geometricus and Araneus diadematus, with the two species avoiding those substances in more than 75 percent of tests, but they did not have any significant effect on S. grossa. Meanwhile lemon oil, though having appeared most frequently in the team’s online search results, did not have a significant effect on any of the three species...........The question also remains as to whether other common species of household spider would be similarly affected........To Read More...

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