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| | Bedbug (Latin - Cimex lectularius) is a widespread type of domestic blood sucking insect. It relates to the order of hemipterous. The order counts about 3000 species.
Bedbug has very flattened body with reddish brown color; the length is 3-5mm and covered with dense hair. Objected vestiture is dirty yellow to dark brown color. From front edge of the head goes a trunk which is adopted to pierce skin and suck blood. Upper and lower jaws have feature of piercing, non-segmented bristles and consists of two tubes- one for receiving blood and other for injecting saliva into the pierced location. These wingless insects had lost wings due to parasitism. Bedbugs give out peculiar unpleasant smell. Despite absence of wings, thanks to the light flattened body, they are capable of moving in air, climbing on walls and gliding from them. Owing to geometry and flexible segmented body, a hungry bedbug is vulnerable to mechanical way of fighting them. A gorged bedbug becomes light-limbed, its body becomes rather oval form and color is like blood (according to this, scarlet to black color, can be approximately defined when this particular bedbug has attacked the victim).
Living habits:
These are parasitic blood sucking wingless insects. Females, males and nymphs are bloodsuckers. They lead nocturnal way of life, daytime they hide in: wall cracks, behind wallpapers, furniture dapping, books, gowns, dark and warm places, cages of birds and animals. They prefer to stay in old houses with wooden walls and floors. In modern brick and concrete houses without wooden floors and crevices of parquet flooring, they rarely live. When dark they come out of shelter and attack humans (sucking blood from open parts of the body). Very hungry bedbugs, when over numbered, can attack in artificial lighting. The bite itself is painless. Sense of itching appears sometime later after the bite. Bedbugs live up to 14months. Their population swells, specially, in summer and in winter if rooms of the house are well heated. If they don’t have prey they crawl along ventilation channels, and in summer along external walls of the houses. Adult bedbug crawls
1,25m/ min, and the nymph crawl up to 25cn/min. As bedbugs gathers, they leave along nymph moults, speckles of excrements and eggs. Bedbugs have very good sense of smell, they suck blood in all stages, one blood suck in 10-15min. Bedbug drinks 7mkl of blood which is equivalent to the double of its weight. Usually it feeds, regularly in 24-28 hours, on mainly human’s blood, but can attack domestic animals, birds, rats and mice. In country side, they crawl from infected poultry yards. Bedbugs can go without food for a long time, adults – up to 5months, and the nymphs up to 1 year.
Reproduction
Bedbugs are insects with hemimetabolism. Females lay 1-12 eggs /day. 250-500 eggs are laid in their entire life cycle and they live up to 15months. Full cycle of development from egg to imago is 30 -40 days. When conditions are not favorable, this takes up to 80-100 days. Bedbugs cannot survive when temperature changes suddenly, that may kill them. If the temperature is +15, they survive for a day, but at a temperature of above 49C, they die.
Infestations:
According to some scientists, bedbugs can store germs of Ku-fever, Francis disease, typhus, bilious typhoid and plague. But much harm is done to humans by their bites, because human being is deprived of sleep and rest and hence his working efficiency decreases. While attacking bedbug, unlike mosquito, does not stay at one location of the skin, but moves along leaving a “track” of bites on skin. Distance between bites may reach several centimeters. Due to their sense of smell, bedbugs find everyday cloths of the human (as a rule, synthetic) and hide in them, and by this way they move on to other dwellings.
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Shocking news from New York this week - the city has a massive outbreak of bedbugs.
These blood-sucking nocturnal bugs have infested hundreds of thousands of apartments and houses in all parts of the city. The bedbug epidemic got so bad that it spread into cinemas, taxi garages, schools, banks and law firms.
