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Scent of Alarm Identifies Male Bed Bugs

from Science News

Male bed bugs get confused in bed. Now a scientist has found a bug chemical signal that translates, "Whoa, buddy. I'm a guy too."

Male bed bugs grasp and try to mate with any other member of their Cimex lectularius species that has had a full meal of blood recently, says chemical ecologist Camilla Ryne of Lund University in Sweden. Single-minded males don't seem inclined, or even able, to distinguish other males from females at first.

At first contact, sex recognition for these insects works largely by trial and error, Ryne says. What corrects those errors, she has found, is a blend of chemicals that earlier work has also described as the bed bug alarm pheromone.