Bed Bug Adult
Bed
bugs are parasitic insects that prefer to feed on human blood. The term is used loosely to refer to any species of the genus Cimex, and even more loosely to refer to any member of the family Cimicidae (cimicids).
The common bedbug, Cimex lectularius, is the most famous species of the family. The name of the "bed bug" is derived from the insect's preferred habitat of houses and especially beds or other areas where people sleep. Bed bugs are mainly active at night but are not exclusively nocturnal and are capable of feeding on their host without being noticed.
Bed bugs have been known as human parasites for thousands of years. At a point in the early 1940s they were mostly eradicated in the developed world but since 1995 have recently increased in prevalence. Because infestation of human habitats has been on the increase, bed bug bites and related conditions have been on the rise as well.
Bed Bug Cycle
Adult bed bugs are light brown to reddish-brown, flattened, oval shaped and have no hind wings but front wings are vestigial and reduced to pad-like structures. Bed bugs have segmented abdomens with microscopic hairs that give them a banded appearance. Adults grow to 4–5 mm in length and 1.5–3 mm wide. Newly hatched nymphs are translucent, lighter in colour and become browner as they moult and reach maturity. Bed bugs may be mistaken for other insects such as booklice and carpet beetles, or vice-versa.
All bed
bugs mate by traumatic insemination. Female bed bugs possess a reproductive tract that functions during oviposition, but the male doesn't use this tract for sperm insemination. Instead, the male pierces the female's abdomen with his hypodermic genitalia and ejaculates into the body cavity. In all bed bug species except Primicimex cavernis, sperm are injected into the mesospermalege, a component of the spermalege, a secondary genital structure that reduces the wounding and immunological costs of traumatic insemination. Injected sperm travel via the haemolymph (blood) to sperm storage structures called seminal conceptacles, with fertilisation eventually taking place at the ovaries.