Richard Becker/Alamy
House-dwelling spiders avoid surfaces that certain aggressive ants have walked over, suggesting that there may be some sort of chemical the ants leave in their wake that could form the basis of an ecologically sound way to keep spiders out of people’s houses.
Alongside his regular spider sex pheromone research, Andreas Fischer at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, has been seeking practical ways to maintain healthy ecosystems while keeping arachnophobic humans comfortable in their own homes.
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He says commercial pesticides “kill everything”, disrupting ecosystem balances. Meanwhile, Fischer’s previous testing revealed that popular “natural” spider repellants like lemon zest and mint oil have little to no effect on spiders.