Abstract
Cimicid insects, bed bugs and their allies, include about 100 species of blood-feeding ectoparasites. Among them, a few have become widespread and abundant pests of humans. Cimicids vary in their degree of specialization to hosts. Whereas most species specialize on insectivorous birds or bats, the common bed bug can feed on a range of distantly related host species, such as bats, humans, and chickens. We suggest that association with humans and generalism in bed bugs led to fundamentally different living conditions that fostered rapid growth and expansion of their populations. We propose that the evolutionary and ecological success of common bed bugs reflected exploitation of large homeothermic hosts (humans) that sheltered in buildings. This was a departure from congeners whose hosts are much smaller and often heterothermic. We argue that interesting insights into the biology of pest species may be obtained using an integrated view of their ecology and evolution.
Highlights
The common bed bug (Cimex lectularius Linnaeus, 1758) is a widespread and locally abundant pest of humans
One lineage of C. lectularius occurs on several species of Old World bats
There has been a significant divergence among and within cimicid species at genes coding for salivary proteins, which are important for blood feeding
Summary
The common bed bug (Cimex lectularius Linnaeus, 1758) is a widespread and locally abundant pest of humans. It is one of about 100 species of cimicid insects, most of which are small, flightless, obligate blood feeders (Usinger 1966; Reinhardt and Siva-Jothy 2007). Some populations of common bed bugs, have adapted to living with and on humans, and perhaps chickens (Reinhardt and Siva-Jothy 2007).
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