Nancy L. Brill, writing for the New York Times:
An unexpected finding from our study is that book lice lived in just about every house. Recent molecular analyses, including research by Kevin Johnson at the Illinois Natural History Survey, have shown that book lice and head lice are more closely related to each other than previously thought. Together with bark lice, they are now joined in a single order, Psocodea. Our findings suggest that different lice are likely here to stay, whether parasitically living on our scalps in the perfect itchy storm or benignly eating mildew from our old books. As a parent who has experienced the head lice battle, I’ve come to the realization that I just have to accept there is no escaping these arthropods.
Indeed, we can conclude that having a diversity of insects and other arthropods in our homes is the norm, and there’s not much we can do about it. Plenty of houses that were sprayed regularly to kill pests still contained a wealth of arthropods. No homes were bug-free. Far from it.
Insects live near us, with us and on us, innocuous roommates in our urban dwellings – a veritable natural history museum in our homes.
This was not the right article to read just before bed.