Blood Sucking Freaks! 4 of 4

OK, so they won’t kill me, but I want them all to DIE!!!!!!!

                Slow your roll killer, we need to talk about a few things. The problem here is that we are not only dealing with bedbugs we are dealing with MUTANT bedbugs, which are immune to our measly chemical defenses. At one time we had almost eradicated bedbugs through the use of pesticides. The problem of using pesticides is that it gives natural selection a chance to find resistances hiding out in the populations DNA. A senior researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (shout out) John Clark and colleagues believe they might have found the gene mutation that has allowed these crafty bugs have to evolve a resistance to the pesticides we use to control them. The traditional pesticides used on these animals attacks sodium channels in nerves. Sodium channels help move nerve impulses down the axons of nerves, and blocking them can cause paralasis and death. But, Clark and colleagues have found that New York bedbugs have mutations that prevent the poison from interfering with nerves, causing them to be up to 264 times more resistant to pesticides than non-mutated populations. And the resistance is spreading, thanks New York. This may sound grim, but like bacterial resistance to antibiotics, it provides a pretty cool opportunity to observe how human intervention can affect evolution.



When pesticides failed to kill them, New York looked overseas for help against the mutant insects.



Lessons Learned. 

So that’s bed bugs, I think we all learned some very important lessons:

1.       Bedbugs sparkle in sunlight, if you squint just right.

2.       Bedbugs are nature’s tiny ninjas.

3.       Bedbugs make bad boyfriends. But more importantly Isabella Rosallini both frightens and intrigues me.

4.       Although Bedbugs want to drink your blood they don’t want to kill you.

5.       Finally, by playing God we have created a race of super mutants.

Thanks for reading, and go wash your sheets.

Skye