Abstract
Sublethal heat stress may weaken bed bug infestations to potentially ease control. In the present study, experimental populations exposed to 34, 36 or 38°C for 2 or 3 weeks suffered significant mortality during exposure. Among survivors, egg production, egg hatching, moulting success and offspring proliferation decreased significantly in the subsequent 7 week recovery period at 22°C. The overall population success was negatively impacted by increasing temperature and duration of the stress. Such heat stress is inadequate as a single tool for eradication, but may be included as a low cost part of an integrated pest management protocol. Depending on the time available and infestation conditions, the success of some treatments can improve if sublethal heat is implemented prior to the onset of more conventional pest control measures.
Highlights
Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) have great success in urban areas and encounter few constraints in their environment
No mortality was observed in the control treatments, indicating limited impact from handling, rearing boxes, filter paper, artificial feeding or climate chambers at 22 ̊C and 60% relative humidity (RH)
The present study provides new knowledge regarding the effect from long lasting, sub-lethal heat stress on bed bug populations
Summary
Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) have great success in urban areas and encounter few constraints in their environment. Food through human blood meals is available in sufficient quantities, cryptic nocturnal behaviour enables undisturbed feeding [1, 2], aggregation in cracks and crevices offers suitable microhabitat [3], hitchhiking on human belongings [4, 5] or walking [6, 7] secures efficient dispersal, natural enemies [8,9,10] are mostly absent, the high reproductive rate promotes fast population growth [11, 12] and resistance counters our attempts to use pesticides for elimination [13,14,15,16,17] Many of these success factors are difficult to manipulate in bed bug control, but the abiotic environment in which bed bugs thrive is disposed to alterations. Human sleeping quarters are usually confined spaces where temperature in well-insulated buildings
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