On world wide web for bed bug related facts last week an article on the sex life of the bedbug caught my eye. There are some inconsistencies in the newspaper article but the fundamental facts were interesting enough. Could it be at long last our trusty enemy can actually contribute some usefulness to society?
Bedbugs thrive thanks to our busy lifestyles in warm heated homes and what is fascinating is that the females have evolved immune structures inside their bodies, because of the violent mating techniques adopted by the males, which are equipped with knife-like penises that they wield like swords. Instead of availing themselves of the female sex organs the male bedbugs simply stab the females in the abdomen and inject semen directly into the abdominal cavity. The semen travels through the female's body to fertilise the eggs.
Females suffer a much higher mortality rate than males because of infections introduced into the wounds during this violent mating. Females mate only after feeding with blood as they are so full, their abdomens having swelled by up to 30 per cent, that they cannot escape. This is a peculiar reproductive system and is so extreme it seems to have only developed once. Bedbugs look like small brown moving dots and often live in unclean spaces, often crawling through faeces. However remember they can also live in very clean houses as well. Lifestyle is no barrier to bed bugs. Males and females are covered in bacteria and fungi and the males introduce these pathogens into the female when they mate. The higher female death rate isn't caused by the wounding, it's the germs. Females have responded to this by developing a whole new immune structure to help protect them against infections introduced by this unusual sexual behavior.
This individual structure could help in the battle against malaria which is on the increase across the world due to global warming. This organ forms a reservoir of white blood cells (which fight infection acting as a first line of defence against potential sexually transmitted infections. This unique structure has developed over the primary area penetrated by the mail bedbug during sex.
Immune structures like this are found nowhere else in the animal world and their discovery should eventually help scientists to develop new techniques to stop mosquitoes passing malaria and other fatal diseases to humans.
Professor Mike Siva-Jothy, of the University of Sheffield, was one of the main scientists involved in the discovery of the structure , which he said will allow researchers to study a concentrated form of insect immune systems. In other insects immunity is dissipated throughout the body. 'It's important for understanding how insects fight infections.
This may well lead to some exciting discoveries in the future, however some perspective needs to be brought to the table as was commented on various sites on the internet. Remember that when you think about this in detail the only trouble with even engineering such a solution is that it would be necessary first to alter some malaria mosquitoes (Anopheles) to have a similar immune structure (rocket science at best at the present time). Vaccinating mosquitoes? And then the little matter of breeding and replacing all malaria-carrying mosquitoes on the planet with them. If we could replace whole populations of mosquitoes in the wild like that, we would have destroyed malaria long ago!
Malaria is caused by a single-celled organism, Plasmodium, with an incredibly complex life cycle. A tiny part of this life cycle takes place in the mosquito. Bedbug females are, after their rape, threatened mainly by bacteria and fungi, very simple organisms compared to Plasmodium. Of course any information the research can provide is interesting, but it has all been hyped and conclusions jumped to just a little too much here. However I did still find the article fascinating and will keep this research under the microscope over the years ahead and make sure banish bed bugs is aware of any further advances.
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