photo of body lice and bed bugs feeding

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Lou Sorkin gave that title to his latest photo, featuring bed bugs dining on his hand alongside body lice.

Yes, body lice.

Lou does things like this to educate us, and I am very grateful. Plus, hes got a hilarious sense of humor!

Lou describes his photo as follows:

Bed bug, Cimex lectularius, and also the human body louse, Pediculus humanus humanus feeding. Red skin area is a nevus flammeus (birthmark) and not a result of insect feeding.

The October meeting of The New York Entomological Society featured Dale Clayton and his research on the Lousebuster system for head louse management. Dale is at the University of Utah. Technically the human head louse is a different sub species from that pictured, but the one pictured is useful for this presentation.

The body lice pictured [below] are from a colony sent by John Clark from the University of Massachusetts where they are fed on a mechanized system developed in his lab and are not from a wild caught population for those of you who wonder about such things!!

Thanks, Lou!

And, ewww!

Update (10/25):

Lou has also provided us with a second, labeled image, entitled Ill tell you whos dining

And the key:

P=Pediculus (louse)C=Cimex (bed bug)

Notice that the smallest louse is smaller than a first instar bed bug nymph.

Also a louse in the group on the left middle area of picture is defecating, a behavior that contributes to it being an important insect vector for louse borne diseases. Defecation on the host and the host scratching introduces the disease organism into the excoriated skin.

Thanks again, Lou! Very helpful.

Photos: Lou Sorkin, used by permission

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photo of body lice and bed bugs feeding

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