Insect Pest of Herbarium and Their Integrated Pest Management

Abstract

Mostly 90% of deterioration into herbaria is caused by insects. Pests are the most hazardous to cellulosic objects. Insects like Silverfish (Lepisma saccharina), Booklice (Psocoptera), Termites (Isoptera), Bookworm (Annobium punctatum), Cockroaches and beetles' species can damage herbaria and paper materials. (Bhowmik;1968). Cockroaches destroys leather binding, paper and parchment and made holes. Due to their excretions severe stains may occur on the pages of herbarium. (Schofield & Crisafulli;1980). Herbarium is a national property it serves the society in many ways like provide materials for teaching, provide job opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, gives the identity of plants, serve as the repository of new collection, run educational courses for the people seeing a lots of uses of herbarium its conservation and preservation is very essential. In herbaria mostly the threat of deterioration is caused by insects where environmental condition also plays a vital role. Herbarium insects are cosmopolitan in nature and distributed all over the world especially in tropical countries. The aim of this paper is to point out different types of herbarium pests which destroys it and given a modern strategy plan on Integrated pest management.