Common bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) grew in number when humans started living together in the first cities. These tiny bloodsuckers were likely the first insect pests to thrive in city environments, and maybe even the first urban pests, according to a new study by scientists at Virginia Tech, United States, that was published in Biology Letters on May 28.
Bed bugs originally fed on bats. But around 245,000 years ago, one group of bedbugs started feeding on humans, likely beginning with Neanderthals.
About a year ago, Lindsay Miles from Virginia Tech began studying bedbug genetic data to see how their populations changed over time. Bedbug numbers dropped around 19,000 years ago, when the Ice Age ended and habitats changed.
Both types of bedbugs did decline, but the ones that fed on humans increased sharply some 13,000 years ago, stayed steady for a while, and then rose again 7,000 years ago. In comparison, the population of bedbugs that feed on bats are still decreasing.
The big change from fewer to more bedbugs happened around the same time the first cities appeared in western Asia and started to grow, as per the study. Before that, people moved around a lot and didn’t often meet other groups, so bedbugs didn’t spread much either.
But once people began living together in cities, it created a new environment for bedbugs. The study states that the bugs started mating with each other more, their numbers grew quickly, and they adapted to life in cities.
The researchers also hypothesised that bed bugs were one of the first pests to adjust to city life and were likely the first insect pests to live in urban areas. Other animals became connected to city life much later. German cockroaches, for instance, started living closely with humans around 2,100 years ago, and black rats around 5,000 years ago.
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Mark Ravinet, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Oslo in Norway, who said that these findings showed that bedbugs can help scientists learn how species adapt to live with humans. He said the study was important for understanding how quickly animals can adjust to human environments and what changes they make in order to survive.
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