Study on the investigating termite damages of wooden structure using detector dog

탐지견을 활용한 목조건축물의 흰개미피해 조사 연구

Wooden structures in Korea are usually damaged by some insects such as termites, wasps, cigarette beetles, powder-post beetles. Especially, the termites inhabiting in Korea are the subterranean termites, Reticulitermes speratus kyushuensis Morimoto, that make colonies in underground, therefore it is difficult to predict and control substantial infestations in advance. Accordingly, to enable inspectors to locate the termite infestations before the extensive damage occurs, the pest management industry has begun using several elaborate tools and making the various effect to inspect areas hard to access through a visual inspection. Recently detector dogs were adopted as one of those tools. Detector dogs are useful for locating subterranean termites because they use their acute olfaction rather than vision. We also have used detector dogs to locate termites and investigated 270 buildings from 31 sites since 2007. According to the results, while 144 buildings (53.4%) were in good condition with no damage by termites, 80 buildings (29.6%) were found out to be damaged by termites through visual inspection and detector dog. So it is expected to control termites according to the conservation status if detector dogs are well trained to discriminate live termites from fecal pellets by termites.