A group of researchers reported in October 2014 the Triatomine bug, a reduviid bug living in the
United States, can carry a parasite that causes Chagas disease.
Melissa Nolan Garcia, a research associate at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, presented two studies at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. For one study, Garcia and her team collected 40 triatomine bugs in Texas and discovered nearly 75% of the bugs were carrying the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.
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Not only can bed bugs travel around the world, but these appleseed-sized, bloodsucking insects are very good at moving from place to place—from a hotel room to your office, or from that flea market find to the rest of your workplace. Once bed bugs enter your business, they begin multiplying—and one female bed bug will lay one to five eggs a day, or an average of 120 eggs in its life.
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“Vehicles possess the ideal attributes that attract rodents in winter, including shelter and built-up warmth from commutes,” says Michael Bentley, Ph.D., a staff entomologist at NPMA. “Rodents hate being out in the open where they are vulnerable to predators, so when they see a car holding freshly generated heat that also offers protection from the great outdoors, they are drawn to it for cover.”
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