Don't Let the Bat Bug Bed Things Bite

Bedbugs have been a nuisance for a long time. We hate them today, cowboys hated them, and archaeologists have evidence that ancient people hated the awful blood-sucking things millennia ago. Itches, pain, rashes, psychological difficulties, resistant to most pesticides — but at least these tiny critters don't seem to spread disease like malaria-bearing mosquitoes. If you're afflicted with bedbugs (it's nothing to be ashamed of, most people are likely to have the problem at some point), you may get some useful information at the US Environmental Protection Agency, click on "Bed Bugs: Get Them Out and Keep Them Out".

Image credit: CDC/ CDC-DPDx; Blaine Mathison

Moving on to the purpose of this post, some scientists are claiming that there is evidence for evolution. Not hardly. Yes, they probably began drinking the blood of bats, and then varied into the version that afflicts humans. That's not evolution, Edna, that's variation and natural selection. For that matter, it's suspected that we're seeing a loss of genetic information.

From the DNA of bat-biting and people-biting bedbugs, researchers from Tulsa to Prague have demonstrated that bedbugs are still bedbugs. In fact, despite their disturbing resurgence in domestic dwellings, bedbugs are showing no sign of becoming anything else, other than more-difficult-to-eradicate bedbugs. Genetic analysis supports the hypothesis that today’s common bedbug originated in bat-caves and, having transitioned to cave-dwelling people, then developed populations with a preference for people and people’s houses. But is that a model for Darwinian evolution?

The rest of this article has some interesting analysis of the claims of evolution, history, a bit of creationist theology, and more. To see the whole shootin' match, click on "In Bedbugs, Scientists Don’t See a Model of Evolution".