Arthropod Containment Guidelines, Version 3.2 — Pest Exclusion in Insectaries

Citation

American Committee of Medical Entomology and American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, “Arthropod Containment Guidelines, Version 3.2,” Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases 19(3):152–173 (2019). The article is open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Read from the Europe PMC full text of PMC6396570 on September 24, 2026. The Guidelines are referenced in NIH Guidelines Appendix G-III-B and in BMBL Appendix E.

What It Says (Verbatim)

Arthropod Containment Level 1, “Pest exclusion program” (ACL-2 and ACL-3: “As per ACL-1”):

“A program to prevent the entrance of wild arthropods (e.g., houseflies, cockroaches, spiders) and rodents effectively precludes predation, contamination, and possible inadvertent infection.”

ACL-1, “Source and harborage reduction”:

“Harborage and breeding areas are reduced as appropriate.”

ACL-2, “Source and harborage reduction” (ACL-3: “As per ACL-2”):

“Harborage and breeding areas are eliminated.”

ACL-1, “Escaped arthropod monitoring”:

“An effective arthropod trapping program is recommended to monitor the escape prevention program.”

What It Means in Plain Language

An insectary runs a pest program in two directions. Wild insects, spiders, and rodents are kept out, because they prey on or contaminate the colony. The colony's own arthropods are kept in, and trapping is the recommended check that containment is working. The harborage standard rises with containment level: reduced at ACL-1, eliminated at ACL-2 and ACL-3.

On a campus, the Guidelines address insectaries holding arthropods of public health importance, including infected, uninfected, and transgenic vectors. By their own terms they usually exempt non-vector arthropods such as fruit flies, and they are advisory. Because a product applied for a building's pests can reach research arthropods, the building's pest program and the insectary's containment practices have to be coordinated; that is a professional observation, not a statement of the Guidelines.

Who It Applies To

Laboratory research with arthropods of public health importance. The Guidelines describe themselves as advisory, a voluntary guide or code of practice; they are referenced by the NIH Guidelines (Appendix G-III-B) and by BMBL.

Documentation Evidence

• The pest exclusion program for the insectary, and its inspection record
• Trap placement and trap check records for escape monitoring
• For ACL-2 and above, records showing harborage and breeding areas were eliminated

Confidence Notes

MEDIUM confidence, for source access only: the PubMed Central page returned a CAPTCHA to automated reads, so the text was read from the Europe PMC full-text record of the same article. Locations are given by section heading because page numbers were not available in that record.