Tabanids (Diptera: Tabanidae) is one of the most serious pest insect group against both humans and livestock. Tabanids' effects to livestock are transmission of some serious diseases such as bovine leukemia, surra and equine infectious anemia, irritation breeding daily gain and milk secretion loss. Tabanids also transmit Loa loa (Cobbold) to humans. Source control by chemical and mechanical methods has no effect due to the larvae of tabanids living under the soil sparsely. At the present, only trapping of adults is effective for controlling tabanids. Traps for capturing tabanids have been developed in two different ways. Some tabanid traps are diverted from tsetse fly traps in Africa such as Nzi trap, and others are developed for exclusive use in North America, Europe and Japan. The early traps attracted tabanids by their shapes and the visual and olfactory factors as attractant were added to the later traps to capture more flies. I reviewed the history of development on traps for capturing tabanids, visual and olfactory attractants for capturing tabanids and next generations of traps for capturing tabanids in this paper.

In Japan, fourteen bites by the red back spider, Latrodectus hasseltii, were reported in four hospitals between 2011 and 2013 in a survey of sentinel hospitals. The distribution of the spider and the areas in which patients were bitten by the spider both expanded geographically each year. Although fatalities or severely ill patients are yet to be reported in Japan, stockpiles of the antivenom and communication with the public and medical professionals should be considered.

Human infestation of the swallow bug Oeciacus hirundinis (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) was confirmed in an apartment complex in the suburbs of Tokyo. Source of the bugs were nests of house martin Delichon dasypus attached to the outer wall. Swallow bugs were successfully eradicated from the room by applying heat and pesticide treatment for bedbugs. Bugs could be kept under captivity by feeding fetal mouse twice a month. We experimentally confirmed infestation by O. hirundinis. This report is the first confirmed human infestation and eradication case of the swallow bug in Japan. Since house martins are a common migratory bird in Japan, potential cases of human infestation may not be rare. In the future, it will be necessary to investigate bedbugs and their prevention, for preventing recurrence and identifying the kind and the nest building of the outside bird.

We collected Cimex hemipterus and C. lectularius (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) from Naha City, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Cimex hemipterus had been previously collected from Japan, and the present report represents the record from Japan, after an interval of about 80 years.

A female resident of Hokkaido visited a dermatology clinic after developing dermatitis on her both legs. A flea collected in the patient’s home was identified as the human flea, Pulex irritans Linnaeus, 1758. All circumstantial evidence indicates flea bites as the cause of the dermatitis.

One individual of male Asiablatta kyotensis (Asahina, 1976) was collected with a sticky trap placed in a storage room of a factory in Ibaraki Prefecture. The trap was placed for two months from July 10 through September 7, 2015. The present study suggests that the specimen was brought into the factory together with materials.

We report here total ten human cases suffering from hard tick (Acari: Ixodidae) infestations in Toyama Prefecture located in the main island of Japan (Honshu) from 2010 to 2015. The causative tick species are as follows: Ixodes monospinosus (3 cases), Amblyomma testudinarium (2 cases), Haemaphysalis flava (1 case), H. japonica (1 case), H. longicornis (1 case), I. ovatus (1 case), and I. persulcatus (1 case). Of these, the one case with H. japonica tick infestation is considered to happen in Hokkaido, not in Toyama, Japan. The two by A. testudinarium tick infestations are re-emerging cases after a long absence since the first case reported in 1976 in Toyama Prefecture. It is speculated that the new two cases might be related to the expansion and the colonization of Japanese wild boar Sus scrofa, a host of A. testudinarium. Finally, two episodes of three patients with I. monospinosus tick infestation are suspected to occur during a school trip to Mt. Tateyama in Toyama Prefecture. The collected data remind us of a risk of hard tick infestations in mountain areas and we should pay careful attention to prevent and treat this infestation.

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake and resulting tsunamis caused widespread destruction across north-eastern Japan. To monitor potential population outbreaks resulting from the damage, occurrence of vector mosquitoes was continuously monitored until August 2015 in three cities: Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture and Kesennuma, and Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture.

An outbreak of adult Culex pipiens group appeared in 2011, the year the earthquake occurred, and large numbers of adult Cx. inatomii appeared the following year. However, beginning in 2012, the number of Cx. pipiens group dramatically decreased, and in 2014, the number of Cx. inatomii also began decreasing considerably. Large numbers of larvae of Aedes togoi, Cx. pipiens group and Ae. japonicus were frequently collected from a number of waste containers under vault toilets and septic tanks that had been damaged and exposed by the tsunami. Large numbers of Cx. inatomii larvae were collected from flooded rice paddies and street gutters. In 2014, as the number of those sites decreased markedly due to land reclamation and efforts to raise land levels, the number of larvae collected also decreased sharply.

Damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami caused outbreak of several mosquito species. However, pools of standing water where mosquitoes can breed have disappeared as land levels have been raised and similar efforts have proceeded. This presumably halted the increased proliferation of mosquitoes.