A Key Trick to Bed Bugs' Persistence: Inbreeding

If bed bugs seem to be everywhere, it's probably because they are. Some bug watchers have estimated that populations of the tiny, blood-sucking mattress-dwellers have jumped by as much as 500% in recent years, and a 2010 survey found that 95% of exterminators in the U.S. had reported taking care of at least one bed bug infestation in the past year.


Experts say that the increase in international human travel, along with the bugs' growing resistance to insecticides, is largely responsible for their resurgence. Now researchers have figured out one reason the critters are so hardy: they can inbreed, quite robustly, for generations. (There are a few other insect species that can do this, notably among them cockroaches.) So all it takes to infest an entire apartment building, for example, is one single mated female that hatches her offspring; after that, the brothers and sisters can mate with each other and keep the population booming.    More Read