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Genetic Diversity Found In Bedbugs After They Were Tracked Through New York Subway System

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Feb 04, 2016 12:01 PM EST

Bed bugs have been bugging humans increasingly of late, due to their resistance to pesticides, according to the Daily Mail.

Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine are assembling their genome.

After mapping it, the researchers followed a group of bed bugs through the New York subway system, hitting upon a strange genetic diversity. It will now help them to create insecticides that can be used against genetic diversity.

"Bedbugs are one of New York City's most iconic living fossils, along with cockroaches, meaning that their outward appearance has hardly changed throughout their long lineage," said George Amato, director of Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. "But despite their static look, we know that they continue to evolve, mostly in ways that make it harder for humans to dissociate with them."

"This work gives us the genetic basis to explore the bedbug's basic biology and its adaptation to sense human environments," he added.

Bedbugs in northern Manhattan are more closely related to those in the southern part of the island, while others in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side show larger variations, said The Toronto Star  reported.

The reason for this is mostly due to subway design. At Manhattan, they link the north as well as the south of the island. There is, however, no connection between the East Side and the West Side through Central Park.

To build up the genetic map, the foundation of the project, researchers used a bedbug colony at the museum, according to The Hamilton Spectator.

The study was published in Feb. 2,2016 issue of Nature Communications.

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