Redesigned Website Brings Improved Answers to Urban Insect Questions
The front page of the newly-redesigned Insects In The City website.
Have you ever wondered how to deal with termites? Or, how to get rid of those pesky aphids invading the plants in your garden?
Texas AgriLife Extension has recently re-designed the Insects in the City website to allow more interactivity and better delivery of information to the public, especially in urban settings.
Developed in 2003 by professor and Extension urban entomologist Mike Merchant with input from Extension Program Specialist-Urban IPM Kim Schofield, the website provides up-to-date information about insects and pests around the home and urban landscape.
Some of the new features that Merchant added include improved fact sheets with more images to better guide people to the information they need. Merchant said that the new site has more options than the previous version and allows other AgriLife Extension contributors to add images, as well as small, captioned animations.
The site includes more links to fact sheets hosted on the Texas A&M Entomology site, as well as other sites to give users more resources to answer questions they may have on a certain insects. "My goal is to make citybugs.tamu.edu more accessible and useful and at the same time, more complete than the previous version," Merchant said.
In addition to the library of fact sheets, there are resources for teachers and students, with topics targeted towards elementary and high school. Some of the topics include adaptations of insects, how insects can be used as a food source and how to collect insects.
Another major improvement is a news section with both Merchant's "Insects in the City" blog for pest control professionals and entomology enthusiasts, as well as a news section with information for the general public. Visitors can also receive updates via the RSS feed or by entering their e-mail address to get content straight into their inbox, Merchant said.
For more information about the site and the new features, visit http://citybugs.tamu.edu. Other AgriLife web sites that focus on insects include http://insects.tamu.edu/ , http://insects.tamu.edu/extension/index.html , and http://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/ .