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According to new research, bedbugs have existed since the dinosaur era, although parasites probably did not disturb prehistoric reptiles.
A new study, published Thursday in Current Biology, revealed that bed bugs have existed for 100 million years, much longer than scientists had imagined before.
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"Thinking that the parasites that live in our beds today evolved over 100 million years ago and roamed the Earth side by side with dinosaurs was a revelation. This shows that the evolutionary history of bed bugs is much more complex than we previously thought, "said Professor Mike Siva-Jothy of the University of Sheffield, who participated in the study in a press release.
Dr. Steffen Roth of the Bergen University Museum in Norway, who led the study, said scientists had previously estimated that bats were the very first bed bug hosts. However, bats only evolved 50 to 60 million years ago.
A new study suggests that bedbugs have evolved 100 million years ago – about 50 million years before Bat, which would have been the parasite's first host. (Stock Image)
(IStock)
"It was also unexpected to see that older, more evolutionary bed bugs were already specialized on a single type of host, even though we do not know who the host was at the time T. rex walked on earth." Roth said.
Scientists believe that pests are unlikely to feed on dinosaurs because bedbugs usually feed on animals with "mansions" – such as a bird's nest or a human bed – that the dinosaurs did not have.
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Roth and his colleagues spent 15 years analyzing bed bug species around the world. According to the New York Times, they studied DNA from 34 species from 62 locations.
Scientists have also discovered that every half a million years, a new species of bedbugs "conquers the human", and although bed bugs usually specialize on new hosts, some of them Between them are changing between different types of hosts.
The researchers also discovered that both species of bedbugs that feed on humans – the common bedbug and the tropical bed bug – are much older than humans.
"These findings will help us better understand how bed bugs have developed features that make them effective pests … that will also help us find new ways to control them," Siva-Jothy said.
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