These research findings, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, are cause for concern as bedbugs are on the rise in the Western World.

Researchers at the University presented live adult bedbugs to over 350 people across South Yorkshire, East Sussex and Norfolk. They found that 90% of beg bug incidences would go unrecognised due to people's lack of knowledge of their appearance.

Teenagers (those aged under 15) were unable to correctly identify the flat, tea-brown, half-lentil sized blood-sucker correctly. One in five people aged over 60, however were able to recognise the small creature.

Bedbugs are on the rise in the Western World due to increased pesticide resistance, air travel and temperatures. Being able to recognise and remove an individual bedbug may help to prevent bugs from reproducing, and spreading, and so will keep their numbers low.

Dr Klaus Reinhardt, an entomologist at the University who led the study, said:

"Older people were expected to know what a bedbug looked like because of their war and pre-war time exposure to these nocturnal sleep-robbers.

"However it is also important that younger generations, in particular those that work in the travel and leisure industry, are educated in the appearance of bedbugs and their nymphs, eggs and traces. The ability to single out a lonely creature crawling over a hotel bed as a bedbug may make all the difference."



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