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A count down of the Top 10 Bloodsuckers: #3: Bedbug ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBwBgbLAMiM
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Photo: RBirtles
Evil, diabolical call them what you will, the wingless microscopic or near microscopic critters we’ve gathered together here are a veritable roll-call of the repulsive and the abhorrent. Fleas, lice, ticks, mites and bedbugs make up the minuscule menagerie, and alongside the mug shots we’ve endeavoured to explain what it is each featured pest does to us that makes it equally if not more repugnant than it looks. Feeling itchy yet? These little guys are certainly getting bloated.
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Photo via Alternative Health Journal
Ever been bitten by Bedbugs? Well, it isn’t pretty; in fact it’s excruciating. Feeding on the blood of humans and other mammals, these night-time nasties get their name from their preferred habitat of mattresses, bed frames, sofas and other furniture, and are often picked up in hotels. Although visible to the naked eye, they’re masters at moving undetected and hiding out of sight in nooks and crannies. They reach their host by crawling or by climbing the walls to the ceiling and jumping down, paratrooper style, on feeling a heat wave.
Elusive menace: Bedbug
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Photo: Adam Cuerden
Like fleas, Bedbugs are attracted by warmth and CO2. Once landed on their host, they pierce the skin with two tubes, one of which injects saliva while the other sucks up blood. The bites cannot usually be felt until much later, when the welts caused are often accompanied by a severe itching as the skin reacts to the anaesthetic injected. Stress, insomnia, and in rare cases nausea are among the reactions to Bedbug infestations, which are undergoing a global resurgence. Infected? The thermal death point for these insect horrors is 45°C.
Infest! Bedbug cases are on the rise
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Photo: A.L. Szalanski
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Photo: gucic
Like other fleas, the Cat Flea – one of the most widespread on earth – is an insect with mouthparts modified for piercing skin and sucking blood – to distinctly itchy effect. Housecats are its choice host, but it also commonly infests dogs, and will bite humans – albeit without being able to breed on us. A few Cat Fleas are unlikely to cause much harm unless their host is allergic to substances in their saliva, but they can transmit other parasites and infections to pets and humans including murine typhus and tapeworm. Nasty.
Flee! It’s the Cat Flea
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Photo: Used with permission from the University of Bath
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Photo: David Walker www.micscape.org
Despite its name, the Human Flea will gleefully infest a range of mammals and birds. Like all fleas, its hind legs are adapted for jumping about 130 times its own body height; its tough body is able to withstand great pressure; and it is compressed, allowing ease of movement through hairs, feathers or clothes. An adult flea’s number one objective is to find blood so that it can mate. Human Fleas can also act as ‘middlemen’ hosts for parasitic flatworms and tapeworms. No need to be a good host to these agile little suckers.
Up close and personal: Human Flea
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Photo: RBirtles
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Photo: CDC/Dr. Pratt
Although a parasite primary of rats, the Oriental Rat Flea is also a dark agent of potentially deadly diseases like bubonic plague. Transmission occurs when the offending flea first bites an infected rodent and then a human. The unsavoury pathogens are spread due to the way the flea’s mouth functions, squirting saliva or partly digested blood into the bite at the same time as sucking up blood. It should be jumping out at you by now that the Rat Flea – onetime bringer of the Black Death – can be much more than just an irritating nuisance.
Harbinger of disease: Rat Flea
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Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) / Janice Carr
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Photo: Kalumet
The name Sarcoptes Scabiei is a bit of a giveaway of the sin this critter commits as it quite literally gets under our skin: the skin infection scabies. The fertilised female of this pernicious parasite tunnels into the skin, laying eggs in the ever-lengthening S-shaped burrow she digs using her mouthparts and blade-like front legs. The larvae then hatch in 3-10 days, climb out onto the skin’s surface, roam about the place, and turn into nymphs, before maturing into adult Mites to begin the cycle all over again.
Under the microscope: Scabies Mite
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Photo via liberty4you
All this moving about on and inside the skin causes some pretty intense itching, but it’s the presence of the eggs that seals the scabies deal, bringing about a massive allergic reaction and yet more often unbearable itching. The resultant scratching of this rash can severely damage the skin, particularly through the introduction of infective bacteria, which may lead to nasty secondary infections like impetigo. Making matters worse, Scabies Mites are easily spread through the house by skin contact with carriers, clothing and bedding.
Scabby? Could be Sarcoptes Scabiei
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Photo: Joel Mills
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Photo via Impact Pest Control
It’s time to deal with the true cooties, beginning with Body Lice. While indistinguishable to look at from Head Lice – indeed the two interbreed under lab conditions – in their natural state Body Lice have evolved to attach their eggs to clothes. These dress rather hair styled insect parasites are not only an annoyance due to the intense itching they cause, but are also vectors of diseases such as epidemic typhus and louse-borne relapsing fever, whose recurring symptoms include fever and chills. If in doubt get boiling your linen.
Engorged: Body Louse on human skin after blood feeding
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Photo courtesy of Richard Webb
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Photo: Department of Biology, Gettysburg College
Next up is the Head Louse, the foul parasite that spends its entire life on the human scalp feeding solely on our blood and laying eggs called nits. This light-shunning vampire is so specialised, its stumpy legs are unable to even walk capably on flat surfaces. Its mouthparts are highly adapted for piercing skin and bloodsucking – when it may also excrete dark red faeces. Nice. Infesting new hosts usually comes about via head-to-head contact. About the only nice thing you can say about the Head Louse is that it is not a known transmitter of disease.
Itchy, flaky scalp? Male Head Louse
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Photo: KostaMumcuoglu
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Photo: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites
Pubic Lice, commonly known as crabs, are infamous for infesting the – ahem – human genitals, though they may also live on other areas with hair, including eyelashes, armpits and beards. While sharing the flattened body and claw-like legs of its cousins – ideal for crawling from hair to hair – the Pubic Louse is otherwise distinct in appearance and more distantly related. Still, this is one mean sucker as those infested will testify – albeit discreetly. Infection usually comes through sexual intercourse. To ensure full removal of nits, shaving is advised.
Nice claws: Pubic Louse or crab
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Photo: PHIL
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Photo: Richard Bartz
Last to grace the stage, it’s the not so loveable ticks, represented first up by the Sheep Tick. Small arachnids similar to mites, ticks are external parasites, living by feeding on the blood of various animals as well as humans. Like others of their kind, Sheep Ticks are found lurking in tall grass and shrubs where they lie in wait. They then attach themselves to passing hosts by inserting their cutting mandibles and feeding tubes into the skin, with backward pointing teeth-like spikes acting as an anchor. The Sheep Tick is an agent Lyme disease in humans.
Tick love: Male Sheep Tick copulating with a much larger female
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Photo: WHO
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Photo: University of Wisconsin
However, the Deer Tick that is by far the most notorious vector for Lyme Disease, a condition transmitted by the bite of infected ticks whose more serious symptoms may involve the joints, heart and central nervous system. Given its name due to its habit of parasitizing the white-tailed deer, the female Deer Tick latches onto a host and drinks its blood for several days, then once engorged, drops off and overwinters on the forest floor. Naturally this little glutton has a taste for humans too. A suitably disgusting, not to say dangerous, critter on which to end the post.
Ticked all the boxes? Deer Tick
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MIAMI (AP) — Customs inspectors in Miami have intercepted five pests that had never been seen before in the U.S. during this year’s first three months.
The list includes a longhorn beetle found in railroad ties from Argentina, a leafhopper in a mint shipment from Colombia and a moth in a container of fresh okra from Honduras.
The bugs were found by Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists at Miami International Airport and Port Everglades in Broward County.
Some of these insects can cause agricultural or environmental damage and they often have no natural enemies in the U.S. Officials say it’s particularly important to keep problem insects away from the environmentally sensitive Everglades, which has recently been invaded by nonnative Burmese pythons.
AP/The Huffington Post By LAURAN NEERGAARD
WASHINGTON — It’s that time of year when the bugs emerge to bug us.
Some can pose real threats – Lyme disease from tiny ticks, West Nile virus from mosquitoes, or life-threatening allergic reactions to bee stings. But most bug bites in this country are an itchy nuisance.
How itchy or big the welt depends in part on your own skin, how much of the chemical histamine it harbors. Yes, some people really are mosquito magnets. And no, most of the bites people blame on spiders aren’t from them at all.
In fact, chances are you won’t be able to tell the culprit unless you catch it in the act. Yet doctors and entomologists alike field calls asking, “What bit me?”
“People call up really bummed out,” says spider expert Jonathan Coddington of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, who points to just two worrisome types in the U.S., the black widow and brown recluse family. Spider phobia, he says, is “out of all proportion to actual risk.”
It’s not uncommon to have a large skin reaction to any bite or sting, and Dr. Reid Blackwelder, a family physician from East Tennessee State University, sees a couple of them a week in the early spring and summer.
“Most of the time, what people need is reassurance,” he says.
To explore the most bothersome biters, Coddington offered the AP a behind-the-scenes look at some of the millions of specimens in the Smithsonian’s entomology collections that scientists use to identify and study insects and arachnids.
Mosquito bites probably are the most common. Sure we’ve been told to watch out for them at dusk and dawn. But the Asian tiger mosquito – a fairly recent immigrant that has spread to 30 states since arriving hidden in some tires in Texas – bites all day long. It’s a more aggressive, harder-to-swat version than native species, Coddington says.
If it seems every mosquito’s after you, well, there are about 3,500 species around the world and Coddington says most don’t bite humans, preferring other animals instead. But those who do can be attracted by sweat, alcohol, perfumes and dark clothing.
Bedbugs are the latest headline-maker. Scientists can’t explain why they’ve suddenly rebounded in many U.S. cities after all but vanishing in the 1940s and `50s. But once they’re in a building, they’re famously hard to eradicate. You won’t feel their needle-like bite, but you might see a line of red dots in the morning.
Not so with horse flies and black flies. They cause painful welts, and they’ll chase any blood meal. And yellow jackets may be a bane of summer picnics, but they’re most aggressive in the fall, the reproductive mating season, Coddington notes.
Most people face no risk other than infection from scratching, but there are some important exceptions:
_Blacklegged tick species, commonly called deer ticks, that are as small as poppy seeds can transmit Lyme disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted more than 35,000 confirmed or probable cases of Lyme in 2009, the latest data available. These ticks are most active from May through July, and are most common in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, upper Midwest and Pacific coast.
If a tick’s been biting for less than 24 hours, chances of infection are small. So do a daily tick check. And the CDC recommends using insect repellent with DEET.
Antibiotics easily cure most people of Lyme. But other than Lyme’s hallmark round, red rash, early symptoms are vague and flu-like. People who aren’t treated can develop arthritis, meningitis and some other serious illnesses.
Different tick species around the country can transmit additional diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tickborne relapsing fever, and STARI or Southern tick-associated rash illness.
_West Nile virus is the main mosquito concern in the U.S. Although cases have dropped in the last decade, the CDC recorded 45 deaths from West Nile last year. Severe symptoms fortunately are rare but include high fever, neck stiffness, disorientation, coma, muscle weakness and paralysis, and the neurological effects sometimes are permanent.
To avoid mosquitoes, the CDC advises wearing insect repellent containing DEET, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Empty standing water where mosquitoes breed.
_At least 40 people a year die from allergic reactions to stings from bees or other insects, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Potentially life-threatening reactions occur in fewer than 1 percent of children and 3 percent of adults.
But seek care quickly for signs of an emergency, Blackwelder stresses: Swelling on the face or neck, shortness of breath or feeling dizzy. People who know they’re allergic should carry an EpiPen.
_Bites from a black widow or brown recluse can require medical care, although fatalities are incredibly rare. You may not feel the black widow’s bite, but within about an hour pain spreads through the abdomen, with cramping or rigid abdominal muscles. Poison centers stock antivenom, but most people do fine with muscle relaxants and other care, says Blackwelder, a spokesman for the American Academy of Family Physicians.
A brown recluse bite eventually forms an ulcerlike lesion that can get fairly large but usually requires just good wound care, he says. But other infections can be mistaken for these bites, so Coddington says bringing in the suspect spider helps identification.
BASF (The world’s leading chemical company) has recently launched a couple of very useful, informational websites for consumers. The Ant Institute is a site dedicated to relaying vital ant control information to home owners. The site features great tips on how to avoid an ant infestation, and also contains facts about colony behavior, and the biology of ants. Another cool aspect of the site is it has an ask the expert feature, which is always a useful resource. Remember, you can always ask us about your pest & termite control questions.
The other site BASF recently launched is The Termite Institute. The site has many similar aspects as the ant institute does except the focus is on termite inspection & control. The site provides homeowners with many answers to questions that people constantly have about these common invaders. You can find the answers to questions such as…
Can termites tunnel through cement?
Does homeowners’ insurance cover the cost of termite damage?
Can I treat my termite infestation myself?
You can also find a useful termite identification chart to help you identify this particularly annoying pest. Be sure to let us know what other pest and termite control resources you use when looking for a professional to protect your home and famil
U.S. Probably Began Global Fire Ant Spread
By Susan Milius, Science News
Genetic evidence now spotlights the United States as the source of recent fire ant invasions in the rest of the world.
The aggressive, stinging fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) aren’t native to the United States but rather to a broad swath of South America. Yet the southern United States, invaded by fire ants in the 1930s, has sent off at least eight separate waves of fire ant invasions to other countries in recent years, says entomologist Kenneth Ross of the University of Georgia in Athens. A ninth invasion probably hopscotched from the South to California before hitting Taiwan.
“It’s not good news,” Ross says. These waves of ants are now colonizing the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong and Macau, he and his colleagues report in the Feb. 25 Science.
“This study is going to cause quite a stir,” says geneticist Michael Goodisman of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, who studies a different internationally invasive ant. The new fire ant study, he notes, “could have important trade and travel implications.”
Regardless of any furor, the study is a valuable step in dealing with the problem, says another invasive-ant biologist, Ben Hoffmann in Darwin, Australia, with the country’s CSIRO research service. “We need to know how invasions spread to be able to prevent spread and effectively manage invasions.”
Biologists had certainly considered this United States–bridgehead scenario of invasions, Ross says, “but without data, it was anybody’s guess.” To track the invasions, an international research team analyzed ants from 2,144 colonies in a total of 75 places in 11 countries and looked at several kinds of genetic information, including dozens of DNA markers.
“Most studies don’t come close to those numbers,” says Goodisman.
Ross explains that looking closely at fire ants in their native range in South America revealed 322 distinct genetic types. Only 11 of those types were found in the southern United States, including three that were very rare in the native range. Yet the populations from newly invaded territories had combinations of the three rare variants from those U.S. types, not the others left behind in South America. Additionally, the researchers ran computer models of how gene patterns in populations change as invaders bud off into new territories. The scenarios that fit the data best, alas, showed the United States as the source, Ross says.
This analysis raises the possibility that the rigors of invading the United States and then of moving on toward world domination have winnowed out weaklings and less invasive ants. Populations now erupting from the United States could be specially adapted as super-invaders, Ross says.
Even if the insects don’t have special adaptations, basic fire ant biology gives the species some tricks for traveling, Ross says. In the ants’ native range, they survive flooding by fleeing their nests with their young and gripping each other to create a living raft of ants that floats until the flood subsides. If they’re afloat for longer than they can survive without food, adults eat the young. Such a capacity for fasting allows fire ants to endure days or even weeks as international stowaways in any kind of cargo.
For in-country travel, young fire ant queens flying off to find mates may end up wafting onto trucks or other ground transportation that take the queens on detours. Aerial queens can reach substantial numbers, Ross says. “We can go into a parking lot and collect 5,000 of them in an afternoon.”
Be sure you check out the Bed Bug Registry before booking your next vacation. http://www.bedbugregistry.com allows users to get online and post bedbug sightings on the web in order to alert others as to where bed bug infestations are. A great tool for any traveler.
Al Hoffer's South Florida Pest Blog 