Life History of the Common Bed Bug Cimex lectularius L. in the U.S.

This study quantifies the rate of bed bug nymphal development, mortality, fecundity and survivorship during starvation for wild caught resistant populations. I then compare some of these characteristics with two susceptible strains. I found that resistant populations develop faster and exhibit less mortality per life stage than susceptible populations. However, there were no significant differences in the total number of eggs produced by the resistant females from the field strains during the 13 feedings/oviposistion cycles (P = 0.106). On average, resistant females from the field strains produced 0.74 eggs per day. Susceptible strains survived a significantly longer time without feeding (89.2 d and 81.4 d) than the resistant strains (RR, ER). The mean duration of adult life (from the day the female becomes an adult until the day she dies) for (RR) strains was 118.7 d ° 11.8 SE. The intrinsic rate of increase r or average daily output of daughter eggs by female was 0.42. The net reproductive rate Rₒ, indicated that one live female egg would, on the average, be replaced by approximately 35 females. Resistant and susceptible populations were found to be different in terms of development, survivorship, and fecundity. The differences between susceptible and resistant strains could be explained by a trade-off between the alleles that confer resistance and the fitness in the population. When compare the stable age distribution of a pyrethroid susceptible strain (HS) and a resistant strain (RR) there were not significant differences (?°= 9.0066, df = 6, P = 0.1732) in the stable age distribution, basically both strains were dominated by the egg stage. No significant difference was found in the expected reproductive contribution of the various life stages to future population size between the two strains (?°= 1.5458, df = 6, P = 0.9564). Despite this, the reproductive contributions of life stages other than eggs were generally higher for the HS strain than for the RR strain. For both strains changes in P? for the adult stage are expected to have the greatest impact on?? compared with changes in P? for the other life stages. The key to the reduction of the populations of bed bugs lies with the reduction of survival of the adults.