What do green street bedbugs eat? - briefly
Green street bedbugs consume plant fluids, primarily sap and nectar from grasses and low‑lying vegetation. They may also ingest soft fruit tissues when available.
What do green street bedbugs eat? - in detail
Green street‑dwelling bedbugs are obligate hematophages; their nourishment consists exclusively of vertebrate blood. Adult insects and nymphs require a fresh blood meal at each molt to progress to the next developmental stage. Primary hosts are humans, but in urban settings they also exploit domestic pets, rodents, and pigeons when human occupants are unavailable.
Key characteristics of their feeding behavior include:
- Host detection – thermal and carbon‑dioxide cues guide the insect to a suitable blood source.
- Feeding apparatus – a proboscis pierces the skin, injects anticoagulant saliva, and draws blood through a negative‑pressure pump.
- Meal size – varies with life stage; first‑instar nymphs ingest 0.1 µL, while mature adults consume up to 7 µL per bout.
- Interval between meals – ranges from 3–5 days for early instars to 7–14 days for adults, extending to several weeks when host access is limited.
Nutritional composition of the ingested blood supplies all essential amino acids, lipids, and micronutrients required for growth, egg production, and metabolic maintenance. Female insects convert a portion of the protein intake into yolk proteins, directly influencing fecundity. After feeding, the blood is enzymatically broken down in the gut, and excess water is excreted as a diuretic droplet, leaving a characteristic dark stain.
Alternative food sources are not utilized under normal conditions. Unlike some predatory hemipterans, these insects lack the enzymatic machinery to process plant sap or other non‑blood substrates. Experimental attempts to sustain them on artificial diets have required supplementation with mammalian serum and specific hemoglobin derivatives, confirming their strict dependence on vertebrate blood.
In summary, the dietary regime of green urban bedbugs is confined to vertebrate blood, with host selection, meal volume, and feeding frequency tightly linked to their developmental cycle and reproductive output.