Abstract
As the most extensively used chemical repellent, N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET) displayed repellency to a wide range of insects, including the common bed bug, Cimex lectularius. While the neuronal or molecular basis involved in DEET's repellency have been majorly focused on mosquitos and fruit flies, DEET's repellency to the common bed bug is largely unreached. To gain new insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms in DEET's repellency to the common bed bug, we characterized the neuronal response of bed bugs to DEET, identified the olfactory receptors targeted by DEET and demonstrated the interfering effect of DEET on bed bug's responses to human odorants. High doses of DEET were required for activating the olfactory receptor neurons in the sensilla of bed bugs and at least three DEET-sensitive receptors were functionally deciphered. These DEET-sensitive receptors presented even more sensitive to certain botanical terpenes/terpenoids which also displayed repellency at varying levels for bed bugs. In addition, DEET produced a blocking effect on the neuronal responses of bed bugs to specific human odors and showed inhibitory effect on the function of odorant receptors in responding to certain human odors. Taken together, our results indicate that DEET may function as a stimulus that triggers avoidance behaviors and a molecular “confusant” for interrupting the host odor recognition in the odorant receptors of bed bugs. The receptors that coincidently responded to both synthetic DEET and botanical terpenes/terpenoids suggested that DEET probably target on receptors that originally responded to terpenes/terpenoids. This study gave novel insight into the mechanisms of DEET's repellency to bed bugs and also provided valuable information for developing new reagents for bed bug control.
Highlights
As an ectoparasite and obligate blood-feeding insect, bed bugs rely heavily on human and animal blood sources for survival, development, and reproduction
We characterized the neuronal responses of olfactory sensillum on the bed bug antennae to DEET and revealed that DEET activated multiple bed bug odorant receptors which involved in detecting certain terpenes or terpenoids
When we examined the constituents of some commercial insect repellents, the mosquito repellents, most were labeled as containing 10-40% of DEET with a minor constituent being essential oils, largely
Summary
As an ectoparasite and obligate blood-feeding insect, bed bugs rely heavily on human and animal blood sources for survival, development, and reproduction. Compared to other blood-feeding arthropods (e.g., black flies, mosquitoes, body lice, fleas, and ticks), which serve as disease vectors, bed bugs have long been considered to lack the capacity for disease transmission (Silverman et al, 2001). The biting nuisance from a bed bug infestation still presents a huge stress and disturbance to human hosts, both physically and psychologically To efficiently control this pest, insecticides, especially DDT and pyrethroids (Ter Poorten and Prose, 2005; Gangloff-Kaufmann et al, 2006), have been extensively used to suppress bed bug populations worldwide and in many developed countries or regions bed bugs were considered to be efficiently controlled and out of public concern. At the end of the 1990s, bed bugs showed a resurgent trend in several developed countries (Ter Poorten and Prose, 2005; Wang et al, 2013), partly as a result of the banning of highly efficient insecticides and the development of insecticide resistance (Romero et al, 2007; Yoon et al, 2008; Zhu et al, 2013)
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