Common Bed Bug

• GeneralIt feeds on blood at night and can go several months without eating.
• reproducciónIt breeds by traumatic insemination: the male pierces the female's abdomen to place the sperm straight into her body cavity.
• It all but vanished from the developed world in the mid-twentieth century and has come back strongly since the 1990s, driven by international travel and by widespread resistance to pyrethroid insecticides.
• It reproduces by traumatic insemination: the male pierces the female's abdominal wall with his external genitalia and inseminates directly into the body cavity. It costs the female both lifespan and offspring.
• The adults can go without feeding for between 41 and 143 days depending on the strain; first-instar nymphs, far less.
• It has resurged worldwide over the last two decades through a combination of international travel, the second-hand furniture trade, a shift to more selective insecticides and resistance to pyrethroids.
• Its association with humans is documented over more than two thousand years, and it probably switched hosts when we lived in caves.
• Resistant populations need up to 2,000 times the concentration of deltamethrin; silica gel dusts, by contrast, still kill more than 95% within 72 hours.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Homes, hotels and transport: mattresses, bed frames and crevices

Size at birth

Elongated white egg of about 1 mm; the nymphs range from 1.5 to 4.5 mm depending on the instar

Sexual maturity

Five nymphal instars, each of which requires a blood meal in order to moult; after the fifth moult the adult is already able to breed

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch in 4-12 days; full nymphal development takes 6 to 8 weeks

Litter / clutch size

About 5 eggs a day throughout adult life, between 200 and 500 in all, in cracks and seams

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimex_lectularius; CDC DPDx; Oklahoma State University Extension (2-3 diarios); Oklahoma State University Extension; CDC DPDx, ficha Bed bugs; LSU AgCenter; LSU AgCenter, ficha Cimex lectularius