On Surfing the internet for bed bug related facts last week an article on the reproductive life of the attention. There are some discrepancies in the newspaper article but the fundamental facts were interesting enough. Could it be at long last our trusty foe can actually contribute some good valueto society?

Bedbugs thrive thanks to our busy lifestyles in warm heated homes and what is fascinating is that the females have developed immune structures inside their bodies, because of the aggressive mating techniques adopted by the males, which are equipped with knife-like penises that they wield like swords. Instead of availing themselves of the female reproductive organs the male bedbugs simply stab the females in the abdomen and inject sperm directly into the abdominal cavity. The sperm travels through the female's body to fertilise her .

Females suffer a 25 per cent higher mortality rate than males because of infections introduced into the wounds during this violent mating. Females mate only after eating as they are so full , their abdomens having swelled by up to 30 per cent, that they cannot escape. This is a peculiar reproductive system and is so extreme it seems to have only evolved once. Bedbugs look like small brown moving dots and often live in unclean spaces, often crawling through faeces. However remember they can also live in very clean houses as well. Lifestyle is no barrier to bedbugs . Males and females are covered in bacteria and fungi and the males introduce these pathogens into the female when they mate. The higher female mortality isn't caused by the wounding, it's the germs . Females have responded to this by developing a whole new immune structure to help protect them against infections introduced by this unusual sexual behavior.

This individual structure could help in the battle against malaria which is on the increase across the planet due to global warming. This organ forms a storage pool of white blood cells (which killinfection acting as a first line of defence against potential sexually transmitted infections. This unique structure has developed over the primary area penetrated by the mail bedbu during sex.

Immune structures like this are found nowhere else in the animal kingdom and their discovery should eventually help scientists to develop new techniques to avoid mosquitoes passing malaria and other fatal diseases to humans .

Professor Mike Siva-Jothy, of the University of Sheffield, was one of the main scientists involved in the discovery of the structure , which he said will allow researchers to study a unique form of insect immune systems. In other insects immunity is dissipatedthroughout the body. 'It's important for understanding how insects fight disease .

This may well lead to some exciting discoveries in the future, however some reality needs to be brought to the table as was commented on various sites on the internet. Remember that when you think about this in detail the only trouble with even engineering such a solution is that it would be necessary first to alter some malaria mosquitoes (Anopheles) to have a similar immune structure (rocket science at best at the present time). Vaccinating mosquitoes? And then the little matter of breeding and replacing all malaria-carrying mosquitoes worldwide with them. If we could replace whole populations of mosquitoes in the wild like that, we would have eradicated malaria long ago!

Malaria is caused by a single-celled microscopic animal, Plasmodium, with an highly complex life cycle. A minor part of this life cycle takes place in the mosquito. Bed bug females are, after their rape, threatened mainly by bacteria and fungi, very simple organisms by comparison with Plasmodium. Of course any information the research can provide is interesting, but it has all been over hyped and conclusions jumped to just a little too much here. However I did still find the report fascinating and will keep this research under the microscope over the years ahead and make sure banish bed bugs is aware of any further advances.