Bed bug behavior - What smell can tell

Bed bugs are on the rebound in developed countries. Traditionally, bed bugs are controlled with pesticides. However, traps with attractive human body odors are a promising alternative.

Posted by

Olga Krips

Published on

Thu 01 Mar. 2012

Bed bug behavior - What smell can tell

Bed bugs are on the rebound in developed countries. Traditionally, bed bugs are controlled with pesticides. However, traps with attractive human body odors are a promising alternative. In two interesting studies Harraca et al. investigated the response of bed bugs to human body odors.

Bed bug behavior - What smell can tell

Bed bugs on the rebound

Those of you who think that bed bugs belong to developing countries are wrong. Bed bugs are on the rebound in developed countries. Traditionally, bed bugs are controlled with pesticides. But the development of pesticide resistance has led to a need for alternative control methods.

Trapped in odors

For blood-feeding insects, traps baited with attractive odors are promising. Experimental biology therefore focuses on the host searching behavior of those insects. Once the attractive body odors are identified, they can be applied to traps to attract the blood-sucking insects.

What bed bugs smell

Harraca et al. investigated in two interesting studies which body odors are detected by bed bugs. They identified which sensilla on the antennae respond to which human odors. A strong response in the sensilla indicates that the bed bugs smell the odor well and that the odor may affect their behavior. Therefore, the odors that gave the strongest response in the sensilla were used to study the bed bug behavior. These were the aldehydes heptanal, octanal, nonanal, and decanal and the ketone sulcatone.

Harraca et al. used EthoVision to determine the preference of the bed bugs for areas with or without these odors and the tendency of the insects to explore their environment.








FREE TRIAL: Try EthoVision XT yourself!

Request a free trial and find out what EthoVision XT can do for your research!

  • A cost-effective solution
  • Powerful data selection
  • Most cited video tracking system

Bed bugs don’t like the smell of humans

The bed bugs were repelled by a high dose of the aldehydes and slightly attracted to a low dose. Sulcatone had a negative effect on the tendency of the bed bugs to explore their environment. In general, bed bugs responded less to human odors as compared to what was found in other insect studies on for example mosquitoes and tsetse flies.

The importance to smell from a distance

The authors suggest that the insect behavior depends on the association between the insects and their hosts. Mosquitoes and tsetse flies have to find their hosts from a long distance and therefore must be able to smell their hosts. In contrast, bed bugs live much closer to their hosts, which makes the ability to smell them less important. Possibly other cues, like heat and CO2 are more important for bed bugs to locate their hosts.

So after all, traps with human body odors do not look so promising to control bed bugs. The search for a sustainable control method continues.

References

Related Posts

How you can efficiently screen for plant resistance to aphids
30 Jul animal behavior research Other (Animal)

How you can efficiently screen for plant resistance to aphids

Aphids are small insects that pierce plant leaves and suck out their contents. Although they inflict limited physical destruction to the plant, aphids commonly infect plants with viruses, which can destroy complete harvests.
A new fish on the block: Japanese medaka in toxicology studies
11 Sep animal behavior research Other (Animal)

A new fish on the block: Japanese medaka in toxicology studies

We are all very familiar with zebrafish as a model species in neuroscience research. Today, let's talk about another fish, the Japanese medaka.
To mate or not to mate? Females are less choosy when males are rare
04 Sep animal behavior research Other (Animal)

To mate or not to mate? Females are less choosy when males are rare

Having a choice for a mating partner is extremely important for females, so they can be critical in choosing which male to mate with.