Do bed bugs have a favorite color? That may just be the case. Researchers have found that bed bugs may actually prefer red carpets as opposed to carpets of other colors.
Researchers wanted to see if bed bugs preferred certain colors for their hiding places. That led to a series of experiments in the lab.
Researchers from the University of Florida and Union College in Lincoln, Neb., created small tent-like harborages from colored cardstock and then placed them in petri dishes. A bed bug was then placed in the middle of the Petri dish and given 10 minutes to choose one of the colored "tents." The scientists created a few variations of the test, including using bed bugs in different life stages, of different sexes, individual bugs versus groups of bugs, and fed bugs versus hungry bugs.
"It was speculated that a bed bug would go to any harborage in an attempt to hide," wrote the authors of the latest study. "However, these color experiments show that bed bugs do not hide in just any harborage; rather, they will select a harborage based on its color when moving in the light."
So what did the researchers find? It turns out that many factors influenced which color the bed bugs chose. As an example, bed bugs' color preferences changed as they grew older, and they chose different colors when they were in groups than when they were alone. The bed bugs also chose different colors depending on whether they were hungry or fed. Males and females also seemed to prefer different colors.
"We are thinking about how you can enhance bed bug traps by using monitoring tools that act as a harborage and are a specific color that is attractive to the bug," said Corraine McNeill, one of the co-authors of the new study. "However, the point isn't to use the color traps in isolation, but to use color preference as something in your toolkit to be paired with other things such as pheromones or carbon dioxide to potentially increase the number of bed bugs in a trap."
The findings could be huge when it comes to deterring bed bugs. More specifically, it provides a new tool for trapping bed bugs, as well.
The findings are published in the April 2016 edition of the Journal of Medical Entomology.
