From cockroaches and bedbugs to fungi and microbes, your home is crawling with life. It has evolved with us for millennia, and now its fate is in our hands
THE German cockroach lives in buildings, nowhere else; outdoors it dies. Exactly when Blatella germanica threw in its lot with humans is unknown, though it is generally thought to be African in origin and may initially have inhabited caves, as many modern roach species do. Wherever it arose, it spread around the world, following our ancestors everywhere they went, being a pest, causing a nuisance. Then, in the early 1990s, it came to the attention of Jules Silverman in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.
An entomologist by training, Silverman's job was to develop chemicals to kill German roaches. For a decade, the best product on the ...
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