What Pests Do Spiders Prevent?

Spiders are commonly known as dangerous pests that can potentially cause harm to your home’s residents, but did you know that spiders can also serve to prevent other pests from populating your house? This fact may leave you questioning whether spiders positively impact the state of pests in your home. For those curious, these are the benefits and risks of keeping a reasonable population of house spiders on your property.

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The Benefits Of Spiders

Spiders are beneficial to the ecosystems they live in, and that includes your home. Common house spiders frequently feed on insects, like roaches, flies, and moths, as well as other spiders. This keeps the population of pesky bugs limited, allowing you to enjoy your home in peace. Fewer pests also mean less risk of disease because many insects and other pests carry infectious microbes into your home.

What Pests Do Spiders Eat?

Not all spiders share the same diet. Some are generalists, meaning they are glad to feed on nearly any animal that gets caught in their webs, while others are specialists that prefer eating specific types of prey. Which pests will be kept in check by the spiders in your home depends on your home’s location and which house spider species are most common in that region—more about identifying types of spiders in Colorado.

pests that spiders eat

These are some common pests that are preyed on by house spiders:

Flying Insects

Flying insects, like house flies, wasps, and mosquitoes, can be extremely annoying. A healthy spider population will keep their population controlled by building webs in high up places where these insects are likely to be caught flying. Vertical traps get used to catch flying insects as they ascend, while horizontal webs get used to catch insects that are flying parallel to the ground.

Crawling Insects

Cockroaches, beetles, earwigs, fleas, ants, and bedbugs are some examples of crawling critters that your friendly household spiders may be inclined to feed on. In some cases, you may even find that a group of spiders will build their webs very close to the point where these bugs are entering your home, allowing them to feed regularly with minimal effort.

Small Rodents

While unlikely, spiders can disable and eat small rodents, like mice. Usually, this is only possible if several spiders attack a very young rodent, but one that is already weak from old age may also fall victim to a spider attack. In most cases, the spiders are more likely to be eaten by the rodents, but on the off chance that the spiders win, that’s one less pest for you to worry about.

Common House Spider Species

There are only a few species of spiders that are willing to take refuge inside of a building. The most common house spiders are Yellow Sac Spiders, Black House Spiders, Brown House Spiders, Hobo Spiders, Domestic Spiders, Common Cellar Spiders, Common House Spiders, Black Widows, Brown Recluses, and Wolf Spiders. Most of these spiders are harmless, though their venom can potentially cause painful or uncomfortable reactions if you get bitten. Therefore, if you get bitten by a wolf spider, brown recluse, or brown widow, you should immediately seek medical attention to avoid infection or other serious complications.

How Do House Spiders Catch Pests?

The typical household spider, Achaearanea tepidariorum, has exceptionally useful webs that can easily catch and restrain any number of crawling invertebrates. Bugs are highly susceptible to getting caught in these webs, as they usually crawl on the surfaces where spiders are most likely to hunt. If there isn’t much getting caught in a trap, the spider will move to another location that may have better results. This method of testing out new sites for their web allows house spiders to capture food quite efficiently, so think twice before you destroy a spider web in an area with high pest traffic.

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Can Pests Fight Off Spiders?

Some pests have biological defense mechanisms that allow them to fend off spider attacks. For instance, some insects have poison secretions that can injure, kill, or deter spiders. Others have a foul taste that makes spiders disinterested in eating them. Aggressive pests like wasps are at a significant disadvantage when immobilized by a web, but they still have dangerous stingers that can be used offensively against spiders. With this in mind, you can’t depend on spiders to take care of all of your pest problems.

Spiders Aren’t Enough, Get OMNIS Pest Control Now.

Spiders may help keep pest populations under control, but they certainly won’t be enough to prevent an infestation. Get help keeping pests out of your home. Reach out to OMNIS Pest Control today to schedule an inspection.

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