The bedbug (or bed bug ) is an insect of the family Cimicidae that lives by hematophagy - feeding on the blood of humans and other warm-blooded hosts. Its name comes from its preferred habitat: mattresses, sofas, and other furniture. Although not strictly nocturnal, bedbugs are mainly active at night.
Name and taxonomy
The common bedbug ( Cimex lectularius Linnaeus 1758) is also known by a variety of common names, including wall louse, mahogany flat, crimson rambler, heavy dragoon, redcoat, and simply "bug". Its names in other languages include meanings such as "stinker" (French punaise ), "nightcrawler" (German Nachtkrabbler ), "bitter" (Sanskrit uddamsa ), "pursuer" (Portuguese percevejo or perceveja , depending on the region), "flat" (Czech plostice ), and "wall louse" (German Wandlaus ).
There are 6 recognized subfamilies of Cimicidae and up to 23 genera, while the number of species has been stated as anywhere from 75 to 108. Most species only feed on humans when other prey are unavailable.
C. lectularius and C. hempiterus will mate with each other given the opportunity, but the eggs then produced are usually sterile. In a 1988 study, 1 egg out of 479 was fertile and resulted in a hybrid, C. hemipterus x lectularius.
Biology
The common bedbug ( Cimex lectularius ) is the species best adapted to human environments. It is found in temperate climates throughout the world and feeds on blood. Other species include Cimex hemipterus , found in tropical regions, which also infests poultry and bats, and Leptocimex boueti , found in the tropics of West Africa and South America, which infests bats and humans. Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella primarily infest bats, while Haematosiphon inodora , a species of North America, primarily infests poultry.
Adult bedbugs are reddish-brown, flattened, oval, and wingless, with microscopic hairs that give them a banded appearance. A common misconception is that they are not visible to the naked eye. Adults grow to 4–5 mm (1/8th – 3/16th of an inch) in length and do not move quickly enough to escape the notice of an attentive observer. In size, they are often compared to lentils or apple seeds. Newly hatched nymphs are translucent, lighter in color and become browner as they moult and reach maturity.
Feeding habits
Bedbugs are normally active just before dawn, with a peak feeding period about an hour before sunrise. However, they may attempt to feed at other times, given the opportunity, and have been observed to feed at any time of the day. They reach their host by crawling, or sometimes climb the walls to the ceiling and drop down on feeling a heat wave. Attracted by warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide, the bug pierces the skin of its host with two hollow tubes. With one tube it injects its saliva, which contains anticoagulants and anesthetics, while with the other it withdraws the blood of its host. After feeding for about five minutes, the bug returns to its hiding place. The bites cannot usually be felt until some minutes or hours later, as a dermatological reaction to the injected agents, and the first indication of a bite usually comes from the desire to scratch the bite site. Because of their natural aversion for sunlight, bedbugs come out at night.
Although bedbugs can live for a year or eighteen months without feeding, they normally try to feed every five to ten days. Bedbugs that go dormant for lack of food often live longer than a year, while well-fed specimens typically live six to nine months. Low infestations may be difficult to detect, and it is not unusual for the victim not to even realize they have bedbugs early on. Patterns of bites in a row or a cluster are typical as they may be disturbed while feeding. Bites may be found in a variety of places on the body.
Reproduction
All bedbugs mate via a process termed traumatic insemination. Instead of inserting their genitalia into the female's reproductive tract as is typical in copulation, males instead pierce females with hypodermic genitalia and ejaculate into the body cavity.
Immature stages
Female bedbugs can lay up to five eggs in a day and 500 during a lifetime. The eggs are visible to the naked eye measuring 1 mm in length (approx. two grains of salt) and are a milky-white tone. The eggs hatch in one to two weeks. The newly emerged nymphs begin feeding immediately. They pass through five molting stages before they reach maturity. They must feed once during each of these stages.
At room temperature, it takes only about five weeks for a bedbug to pass from newly emerged nymph to adult. They become reproductively active only as adults.
Bites
It should be noted that not all persons will react to bedbug bites and that the presence of itchy welts can not be used as the only indicator of a home infestation. It is possible for an initial infestation within a household to rapidly build asymptomatically and go undetected because of this. And, as a result, the notion of 'not seeing any bites' or the common belief of 'having never been bitten' is not a reliable measure in confirming whether or not bedbugs have actually been introduced to a dwelling.
When a reaction does develop, most observed bites consist of a raised red bump or flat welt, and are often accompanied by very intense itching. The red bump or welts are the result of an allergic reaction to the anesthetic contained in the bedbug's saliva, which is inserted into the blood of its victim. Bedbug bites may appear indistinguishable from mosquito bites, though they tend to last for longer periods. Bites may not become immediately visible, and can take up to nine days to appear. Bedbug bites tend to not have a red dot in the center such as is characteristic of flea bites. A trait shared with flea bites, however, is tendency towards arrangements of sequential bites. Bites are often aligned three in a row, giving rise to the colloquialism "fleas bite in threes." This may be caused by the bedbug being disturbed while eating, and relocating half an inch or so farther along the skin before resuming feeding. Alternatively, the arrangement of bites may be caused by the bedbug repeatedly searching for a blood vein. People react very differently to bedbugs, and individual responses vary with factors including skin type, environment, and the species of bug. In some rare cases, allergic reactions to the bites may cause nausea and illness. In a large number of cases, estimated to 50% of all people, there is no visible sign of bites whatsoever, greatly increasing the difficulty of identifying and eradicating infestations.
People commonly respond to bed bug infestations and their bites with anxiety, stress, and insomnia. Individuals may also get skin infections and scars from scratching the bedbug bite locations.
Most patients who are placed on systemic corticosteroids to treat the itching and burning often associated with bed bug bites find that the lesions are poorly responsive to this method of treatment. Antihistamines have been found to reduce itching in some cases, but they do not affect the appearance and duration of the lesions. Topical corticosteroids, such as hydrocortisone, have been reported to expediently resolve the lesions and decrease the associated itching.
Many patients also experience temporary relief of itching and inflammation with the application of hot water to the bite. The water should be quite hot (about 50 °C / 120 °F) because if it is not hot enough it may cause aggravation of the symptoms. The water should be hot enough to cause minor discomfort, but care must be taken not to burn the skin and this treatment should only be self-administered in order to reduce the risk of a burn. Itching and inflammation can be relieved for several hours by applying hot running water, a hot washcloth, or even using a blowdryer to heat the area of the bite, for 10 seconds to 1 minute (or longer if desired). There is disagreement as to why heat causes the symptoms to abate. Some hypotheses propose that heat overwhelms the nerve endings that signal itch, that heat neutralizes the chemical that causes the inflammation, or that heat triggers a large release of histamine causing a temporary histamine deficit in the area.
Disease transmission
Bedbugs seem to possess all of the necessary prerequisites for being capable of passing diseases from one host to another, but there have been no known cases of bed bugs passing disease from host to host. There are at least twenty-seven known pathogens (some estimates are as high as forty-one) that are capable of living inside a bed bug or on its mouthparts. Extensive testing has been done in laboratory settings that also conclude that bed bugs are unlikely to pass disease from one person to another. Therefore bedbugs are less dangerous than some more common insects such as the flea. However, transmission of Chagas disease or hepatitis B might be possible in appropriate settings.
Other effects on health
The salivary fluid injected by bed bugs typically causes the skin to become irritated and inflamed, although i
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