Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [114]
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*93Those of you looking for a more detailed explanation on the concept of evolutionary constraints should read Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin’s terrific essay, “The Spandrels of San Marcos and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme.”
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*94Pheromones are sprayed or otherwise released into the environment by a variety of creatures, including insects and many mammals. Different pheromones communicate information on territorial boundaries, availability of females for breeding, and location of trails (to food or back to the nest).
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*95Bed bug copulation is actually quite dangerous for the female since it entails a violent exercise known as traumatic insemination. During this process, the male pierces the female’s abdominal wall with his intromittent organ and injects his sperm into the wound. This practice, in which the female’s external reproductive structures are not involved at all, may have evolved as a way to circumvent female mating resistance. Not surprisingly, traumatic insemination has some negative effects on female bed bugs, increasing the risk of infection and reducing life span and reproductive output.
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*96Various insects and other arthropods prey on bed bugs. These include several species of ants, including Pharaoh ants (Mnomorium pharaonis), a bug called the “masked bed bug hunter”(Reduvius personatus), spiders (Thanatos flavidus), centipedes (Scutigera forceps), and pseudoscorpions (Chelifer cancroids). Finally, although an 1855 paper reported that cockroaches fed on bed bugs, this claim has not been supported and the two insects may, in fact, “live happily together in the same house.”
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*97 The owners of Advanced K9 Detectives (out of Milford, Connecticut) claim that their certified Bed Bug Dogs can sniff out infestations within minutes.
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*98Parasites switching hosts is a common occurrence in nature—and it’s one of the ways that new species emerge. Recently, scientist David Reed and his co-workers compared the DNA in species of sucking lice that prey on either humans or gorillas. They hypothesized that gorillas actually spread these blood-feeding parasites (arthropods belonging to the order Anoplura) to ancient human ancestors around 3.3 million years ago. Since that time, the lice evolved alongside their new hosts (i.e., underwent coevolution), eventually becoming different enough to be considered a separate species from the gorilla lice. For example, as humans lost most of their body hair, the lice became adapted to live in thatches of human pubic hair, where, unlike gorilla lice, they are transmitted mainly through sexual contact. The researchers believe that the lice were originally spread to humans via one of three routes: sexual contact between gorillas and early humans, ancient humans killing and handling gorillas (parasites often spread from one host to a predator of that host), or gorillas and humans sharing communal areas.
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†99 Bed bugs ’n’ beans was apparently a popular medicinal dish (showing up in Pope John XXI’s Thesaurus Pauperum ). But here, rather than mixing the two ingredients together, those suffering from fever were instructed to place the bugs into a hollow bean before swallowing it.
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*100 This was two years before Pliny (a scholar, historian, and naturalist)