Figure 1
Effects of mating and starvation on the feeding parameters of Cimex lectularius females. (a) Percent feeding represents the percentage of tested females that ingested blood, determined visually by presence of blood in the digestive system. Unmated and mated female body mass before (b) and after (c) blood-feeding. Blood meal mass (d) was derived for each bed bug by subtracting its unfed body mass before feeding from its body mass after feeding. Females were allowed to fully engorge in a single blood meal within 8–10 days of eclosion and divided into three treatments. Unmated-Reference: not exposed to males; Unmated-Long: each female was housed with a sterile male (intromittent organ surgically ablated, denoted by an X within the male sign) until she died; and Mated-Long: each female was housed with a fertile male (denoted by a male sign) until she died. Both Unmated-Long and Mated-Long females were exposed to four starvation periods: 8, 20, 30 or 40 days. Numbers within bars represent the total number of replications for that treatment. The percent feeding differences between unmated and mated females for 8, and 20-days starvation periods are significant at ****P < 0.0001 and ***P = 0.0001, according Fisher’s exact test (two-tailed). Bars with different lower-case letters indicate significant difference (P < 0.05) according to Kruskal–Wallis, Dunn's post hoc test.
