Entomology 101: Bedbugs bite on college campuses
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A growing number of new and returning college students may be signing up for an unexpected entomology class this fall as they descend upon campus housing, say experts: About 15 years after bedbugs began to reappear in American homes and hotels, a growing number of campuses are finding the blood-sucking pests to be a problem in dormitories, according to reports circulating around the country.
In recent years, infestations of bedbugs reportedly have cleared dorms at Stanford, Ohio State University, Middlebury College in Vermont and the University of Florida, where campus pest control was called in to eradicate the elusive brown bugs. But UC Irvine entomologist Alec Gerry says that college dorms everywhere ‘are probably excellent places for bedbugs to thrive,’ because they have a concentrated source of food -- dorm-dwelling students’ blood -- to sustain them. And bedbugs -- which are about half the size of the fingernail of your pinkie finger -- are remarkably adept at hitchhiking furtively into college dorms inside bedding, suitcases, clothes and soft furniture. Until recently, they were more likely to come in with students from abroad -- where bedbugs remain a common scourge, says Gerry. But with a growing number of American homes infested, the bugs are now as likely as not to come from middle-class homes throughout the United States.
Bedbugs do not carry disease -- unless you consider insect-induced stress an illness. But when they emerge from hiding at night, they bite -- often many times. While those newly exposed to their bites often do not react, those bitten many times may begin to have itchy welts. These signs of bedbugs are seldom properly diagnosed, and can become infected.
How to spot them? Although not winged, bedbugs are quick escape artists. They tend to hide in cracks in the walls, inside furniture and inside the seams of mattresses, which give them ready access to sleeping humans. Gerry says that a summer without a meal will not starve them -- they can survive that long without blood -- so a dorm room that was infested last June is likely to have remained infested unless a cleaning crew found them.
Returning students and their parents might look around a dorm room while it’s still pretty bare, says Gerry. The best evidence of a bedbug infestation would be tiny black dots along the seams of a mattress, where fleeing bedbugs have left excrement behind. Once established in dorm rooms, students should be aware of tiny blood droplets on their sheets, which may signal blood-sucking night visitors.
Sleep tight ...
-- Melissa Healy
