Introduction

The urban environment is a complex of habitats developed by humans from natural sites or agricultural land. Houses, villages, towns, cities, buildings, roads, and other features that characterize the urban environment have gradually and irrecoverably changed the landscape of natural and agricultural areas. As a part of this change, some habitats and their associated plant and animal communities were eliminated, while others were expanded and new ones were created. Many of the new habitats were intentional – parks, waterways, street trees, turfgrass, food stores – but some were consequential – standing water in roadside ditches, garbage and landfill sites near residential neighborhoods, the underground sewer and storm drain network in urban and suburban areas. They all provided habitats for a select group of insects and other arthropods, some of which attained pest status.

Local conditions, climate, and available resources determine the distribution of some arthropods in the urban environment, and for some species their abundance is limited. Other species are broadly adapted to the resources and harborages in and around buildings, and these are cosmopolitan in their distribution and pest status. Stable habitats with resources and conditions suitable for long-term survival support reservoir populations of pest species, and from these habitats individuals or groups move or are transported to establish infestations in unstable or temporary habitats.

Peridomestic and domestic habitats

Within and around buildings, houses, and other urban structures are habitats that support individuals or populations of plants and animals. Peridomestic habitats are outside, around the perimeter of structures.