/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1337280
Bedbug mating habits are really something else.

> North Carolina State University found that bedbugs in contrast to most other insects tolerate incest and are able to genetically withstand the effects of inbreeding quite well.[33] Male bed bugs sometimes attempt to mate with other males and pierce their abdomens.[34] This behaviour occurs because sexual attraction in bed bugs is based primarily on size, and males mount any freshly fed partner regardless of sex.[35]

All bed bugs mate by traumatic insemination.[4][36] Female bed bugs possess a reproductive tract that functions during oviposition, but the male does not use this tract for sperm insemination.[4] Instead, the male pierces the female's abdomen with his hypodermic penis and ejaculates into the body cavity. In all bed bug species except Primicimex cavernis, sperm are injected into the mesospermalege,[4] a component of the spermalege,[4] a secondary genital structure that reduces the wounding and immunological costs of traumatic insemination.[37][38][39] Injected sperm travel via the haemolymph (blood) to sperm storage structures called seminal conceptacles, with fertilisation eventually taking place at the ovaries.[38]

The "bed bug alarm pheromone" consists of (E)-2-octenal and (E)-2-hexenal. It is released when a bed bug is disturbed, as during an attack by a predator. A 2009 study demonstrated the alarm pheromone is also released by male bed bugs to repel other males that attempt to mate with them.[39][40]

Cimex lectularius and C. hemipterus mate with each other given the opportunity, but the eggs then produced are usually sterile. In a 1988 study, one of 479 eggs was fertile and resulted in a hybrid, Cimex hemipterus × lectularius.