Fig. 6

Rescue experiment of hemoglobin digestion in wCle-free bed bugs treated with B-vitamins. wCle-free bed bugs were assayed 4-d and 8-d post-feeding. Ten bed bug midguts were dissected for each treatment and time point. Within each treatment group, each hemoglobin measurement at 4-d and 8-d was normalized to mean hemoglobin content of the respective treatment group immediately after feeding (0-d post-feeding). There was a significant difference between treatments at both time points post-feeding (one-way ANOVA, d 4: F = 14.73, df = 4,45, P < 0.0001; d 8: F = 16.99, df = 4,45, P < 0.0001). Treatments within each time point that do not share lowercase letters are significantly different from each other (Tukey’s HSD test, P < 0.05). For reference to wCle-present bed bugs, the two horizontal red lines represent the average proportion of the initial hemoglobin content for wCle-present bed bugs from 4-d and 8-d respectively in the experiment shown in Fig. 5A. Both riboflavin and the full vitamin mix (B2, B7, B1, B6, and B9) resulted in significant recoveries of hemoglobin digestion compared with the no-vitamin controls at both 4- and 8-d post-feeding. Means ± SEM are shown.