Comparison of Two Different Morphological Methods to Study the Pronotum of Cimicidae: Bed Bugs, Bat Bugs, and Swallow Bugs

Abstract

An infestation of a Cimicidae (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) member, especially the bed bug, can cause economic loss and impact health. A cost-effective and user-friendly method for identifying the infesting species will help with the early detection and control of infestations. A linear morphometric method is often used, but it requires the examination of many characters and a highly preserved specimen. We conducted a comparative morphometric study of the effectiveness of Cimicidae classification using a single organ, the pronotum, through outline-based and linear morphometric methods. Bat (Stricticimex parvus), human (Cimex hemipterus), and bird (Paracimex sp.) ectoparasites were subject of the study. With both methods, the properties of size and shape were compared and used separately to classify the specimens. Classification analyses of the two methods provided similar results, but more informative variables of size and shape were obtained with the outline-based approach. Size, as analyzed with the outline-based method, could detect sexual dimorphism, and produced better reclassification. The shape variables obtained from the linear measurements were strongly influenced by size variation, much more than the ones obtained from coordinates describing the pronotum contours. Our data suggest that the outline-based approach provides better characterization variables, thus we recommend them for a wider use in other Cimicidae family members.

Lateralized Movements during the Mating Behavior, Which Are Associated with Sex and Sexual Experience, Increase the Mating Success in Alphitobius diaperinus (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

“…Furthermore, the predominance of male approaches from the females' left-side suggests that in these beetles, specialized neural circuits would probably act in opposing directions leading to lateralized sensory-motor displays and improvements in short-distance sex recognition as shown in other insects [12,15,16]. Moreover, the different ways experienced adults approach might be due to changes in anatomy during the adult phase in A. diaperinus [29], as reported in other insects [30,31]. Further studies are needed to understand asymmetrical differences in responses based on sex entirely.…”

Wing geometric morphometrics to distinguish and identify Haematobosca flies (Diptera: Muscidae) from Thailand

“…Unsupervised classification using an unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean based on the Euclidean distances between shape variables was used to generate the hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) tree ( Rajonhson et al, 2022 ), which displays the pattern of the similarities and differences of wing shape between individuals.…”