Kissing Bug

• It is the main vector of Trypanosoma cruzi, the cause of Chagas disease, and at one point accounted for more than half of all vector-borne cases in the Americas.
• It does not pass on the parasite when it bites but in its faeces: it defecates on the skin while feeding, and the person inoculates themselves by scratching.
• The Southern Cone Initiative, launched in 1991 by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, focused on eliminating it from houses; Uruguay declared itself free of vector-borne transmission in 1997, Chile in 1999 and Brazil in 2006.
• Darwin described it in his Beagle diary on 26 March 1835, after being bitten on the pampas by what he called the benchuca, the great black bug of the Pampas.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Cracks in the walls and roofs of rural houses and their outbuildings — hen houses, corrals — in the South American Southern Cone; there are also wild populations in the Bolivian Andes

Sexual maturity

After five nymphal instars, each of which requires at least one blood meal, the nymph moults straight into a sexually mature adult

Gestation / incubation

The eggs hatch in 10 to 40 days depending on the temperature; warmth speeds up hatching

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Triatoma infestans · Animal Diversity Web, Triatoma infestans

Best time: Adult emergence peaks in the southern summer, between December and January; two generations a year in a warm climate and one in a cold one