C.V.
Riley Entomological Society bulletin board
Julia Shuck, posted Nov. 14, 2006
They
creep, they crawl, they bite you in your sleep! Are you familiar
with they bedbug? If not, you might want to stop by the C.V.
Riley Entomological Society bulletin board, located in the
Agriculture Building.
Lisa Wilkerson, a MU student, had a personal experience with
bedbugs within the past year. “Watch out for bedbugs
when you go to New Zealand,” she said. “We found
bedbugs in one of our hotel rooms by looking where the trim
and the wall met. When we reported this to the hotel attendant
he didn’t believe us until we exampled to him that my
husband is an entomologist and showed him where we found the
bedbugs.” She said the hotel staff moved them to a new
hotel room after proving the bugs were there.
According to the bulletin board, pest-control calls for extermination
of bed bugs have increased 300 percent since 2003, affecting
40 states in the U.S. Since prehistoric times, bedbugs were
practically eradicated in the U.S. since WWII, but they have
become a bigger problem in recent years due to increased amounts
of world traveling.
Bedbugs are ¼ inch long, light-tan color before feeding
and dark-red or brown after feeding. While bedbugs can last
10 months without feeding; they prefer to eat once a week
during the night. Sleepers will not notice these painless
bites until they next morning, when a hard bump with a white
center appears and begins to itch.
These insects, attracted to body heat, lay up to 500 eggs
during their lifetime and can repopulate a room within three
to four months. Rooms infested with bedbugs give the room
a sickly sweet smell and can hide almost anywhere, from picture
frames to furniture and from telephones to electric light
switch plates.
Ways to prevent intruding bedbugs into your house include
checking your luggage when you get home from a trip to make
sure there are no bedbugs, vacuuming your suitcases out, regardless
if bedbugs are found, and checking your hotel room for these
bugs. Tell the front desk immediately, if found. Also, look
for the casings of dead bedbugs.
Other highlights of the bulletin board include identifying
nine types of antennal and a morphology lesson where you can
learn to speak like an entomologist by knowing the scientific
names of the different parts of an insect. More information
can be found on the clubs board along with pictures of bedbugs
and their bites.
Information about bedbugs on the bulletin board was credited
to the Ecolab Pest Elimination, the National Pest Management
Association, Inc. and the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
