Bedbugs are a growing problem in New York city and others in the Hudson Valley. They make people uncomfortable as they bite us at night to suck a little blood. Fortunately, they seem not to carry any diseases. They’ve been disturbing us humans for many centuries. They show up in Egyptian fossils (mummies and more) from 3,500 years ago. Did they always “bug” us?
Lindsay Miles and her colleagues at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University took a look at the recent evolutionary history of bedbugs, using DNA analyses. Voila! Bedbugs became numerous as species between 13,000 years ago and 7,000 years ago… at least, the bedbugs that go for humans. There was no such multiplication of species of bedbugs that attack bats.
The proliferation of our itchy little nemeses overlaps the time interval when we, well, created beds that we’d return to night after night. That’s when we settled around agricultural sites, that’s when we started building cities. It’s nice to sleep in your own bed, night after night… but not without problems.
Bedbugs have become more numerous in recent decades. Analyses point to lots more international travel, more trade in second-hand clothes, and reduced use of helpful but nasty pesticides. We may just get used to it.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: Nature 642: 11 (2025), citing Biology Letters 21: 20250061 (2025)
Image: 329. Bedbug bites.jpg, from Nextgen Pest Solutions
