BED BUGS MAY BE BECOMING A NEW SPECIES

In Las Vegas like the rest of the country we are concerned about bed bug outbreaks. Bed bugs were almost completely eradicated from human habitats in developed countries around 1940, but recently infestations have been on the increase.

Research suggests the common bed bug (aka Cimex lectularius) may be in the early stage of splitting into an entirely new species. The journal Molecular Ecology published the study online in January.

The bed bug is an ancient pest, and our lives have been intertwined for millennia. In the late 1990s, for example, archaeologists found preserved bed bug remains at an Egyptian site dating back more than 3,300 years, and bed bug experts have long thought our relationship with the pests stretches back tens of thousands of years.

Since the 1960s, entomologists who study bed bugs have hypothesized the insects originated in caves, where they fed on bats. In 2012, scientists from Charles University in the Czech Republic suggested the common bed bug split from its bat-feeding relative around 245,000 years ago. The Czech scientists, along with researchers from the University of Tulsa and North Carolina State University, collected DNA from 756 bed bugs found both in homes and in attic bat roosts across Europe. The bugs living with the bats--Myotis myotis, the greater mouse-eared bat--were confirmed as Cimex lectularius, rather than the bat bug, a separate species. And although the bat-feeding bugs lived in the same buildings as people, these bugs stayed with the bats in the attics. In other words, the bed bugs were all the same species, but their source of food was distinct: Either they fed on people, or they fed on bats.

Although the insects appear to be the same species, they are so genetically different that the researchers think the bed bug may be splitting into a new species--one that is unique to humans.

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