Let's see. Bedbugs have been around for MILLIONS of years yet insecticides are a very recent manmade development. So how did the bedbug have sophisticated genes that could resist these insecticides? It is almost like when bedbugs developed millions of years ago, something knew in advance that they would one day in the distant future have to fight off insecticides developed by a species that didn't even exist yet.
I think you might have some sermon material here.
bed bugs, the new plague, is caused by letting middle easterners and illegals into the country....even the well to do ones don’t seem to mind a vermin or 2 in their undies....
Genes don’t ‘know’ about insecticides. You may have one in a million who come up with a mutation that makes them not react to them. They are therefore able to breed versus die. The ones that survive and breed pass on this trait to new generations and so on..
Smoke and mirrors to obscure the fact that open borders and the resultant third-word sanitary practices have caused the resurgence of bedbugs in the US.
Sound like evolution in action, more likely.
The bugs more resistant to the insecticide were better able to breed. Same as the hand sanitizers makes for a stronger breed of bacteria, because the ones it doesn't kill become stronger.
I’m sure little dinosaurs flopping around on useless proto-wings for millions of years had a gleam in their eye, too. They just knew.
Due to natural variation in the genetic code, out of billions of bugs, a very small number will have undergone mutations that make them more resistant to insecticides.
These individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce than the non-resistant individuals. Over time the resistance will tend to spread throughout the species.
I actually lived through a bedbug nightmare some years back. I thought I had a rash ... then I finally found one on me and we knew.
I lost all my furniture and bed and carpet and had to wash everything.
The exterminator used a pyrethrin-based spray and it took care of them.
However ... are they resistant to DDT? Because THIS is what they used to use before it was banned, right? I can understand banning it OUTSIDE because it caused bald eagle eggs to have shells that were too thin ... but inside? It seems as though common sense would say, “Ok... DDT works and we’re only going to use it inside... so let’s allow it.”
A bedbug sniffing dog was in my apartment some months ago and yippee...no bugs at all....
...but I also discovered that NOW they have a new heat treatment that let’s you keep your furniture.
That would have been good when I had them.
On the local news the other night they showed the best treatment for bed bugs was heat. They pipe heat into your house and raise the temperature to 140’ degrees and they are dead.
Of course, if the room hasn't been occupied for some days, the cover will allow the critters to invest the sheets. Best thing is to carry a small bottle of sanitizer that can be sprayed.
Or their genes adapted. I often wonder if we plucked someone from the 1860’s rural setting and plopped them in the middle of NYC, how long they could live. I am not talking about physical safety, but about smog, chemicals, processed foods... how would their bodies hold up to what we have gradually become accustomed to by our mother’s eating some more processed than their own mother, and on and on.
I hope this makes sense, not quite sure how to put it.
Same as bacteria and viruses that have less "sophisticated genes" have mutated through time? It's getting close to where anti-biotics will no longer work.
I know people who have used food grade Diatomaceous Earth. It is dangerous to critters with an exoskeleton.
Have them in my apartment now. Going through the third treatment. They come in through cracks, wall light and electrical sockets vents. If your neighbors have them...you will too. I haven’t slept in a bed for months now.
Let's see. Your screen name is PJ-Comix, so I hope you're just being funny or sardonic. Otherwise, I'd be amazed at how uneducated and/or clueless you are about the world around you.
The Obama Index Factor. Fast and Furious Bed Bugs.
Bfl
The bedbug genes didn’t KNOW about insecticides. That’s not how evolution works.
Spray insecticide on 20 million bedbugs and all of them die, except for a few. Those few bugs survived because they had some genetic difference, some flaw. Lucky hit, nothing more.
It’s taken most of a century for that small colony of lucky bedbugs to spread back into their old range. You see the same thing with disease bacteria, mold, etc. Evolution never stops.
The few that are resistant to the insecticide survive and produce the next generation, and so on until the entire population has that ability.