Kissing Bugs

Keep your eyes peeled for adult Wheel Bugs (Arilus cristatus, family Reduviidae) if you’re working among the branches of landscape trees and shrubs. The bugs are highly beneficial. They use their piercing-sucking mouthparts to extract the essence-of-insect from soft-bodied prey such as caterpillars and sawfly larvae. However, they may occasionally use their insecticidal equipment to deliver painful bites to people.

This Alert is being posted because of the number of pictures and specimens I’ve recently received of adult kissing bugs being found in Ohio homes. The kissing bugs are native to Ohio and called the bloodsucking conenose.

Adult Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus, family Reduviidae) are now roaming landscapes and forests in southwest Ohio. The immatures (= nymphs) have been with us for some time lurking among the leaves of trees and shrubs on the hunt for soft-bodied insects.

This past week, the Kissing Bug Triatoma sanguisuga was identified from images sent to OSU Entomology from a resident in Warren County and to OSU Extension, Butler County, from a resident in that county. This kissing bug was given the approved common name of Bloodsucking Conenose by the Entomological Society of America (ESA).

Rising spring temperatures have been rousing fall home invaders from their winter slumber inside wall voids, attics, etc. The intruders migrated into these spaces last fall through openings around window frames and door jams. Attics with unscreened outdoor vents or poorly fitting soffits can become 5-star bug hotels.

It’s common for people to call all insects bugs. However, entomologists reserve the bug name for a specific group of insects that belong to the suborder Heteroptera (order Hemiptera). To emphasize the point, entomologists refer to these heteropteran insects as the true bugs which may imply we consider all other insects to be false bugs but that’s not true.

All "bugs" aren't bad. Entomologists call insects that belong to the suborder Heteroptera (order Hemiptera) the "true bugs" and insects belonging to the hemipteran family Reduviidae are collectively known as “Assassin Bugs.” The family includes over 190 species in North America and they are all meat-eaters. The common name for the family clearly describes how these predatory stealthy hunters make a living.

I've received four e-mail messages since late last week from concerned Ohio homeowners who asked about controlling kissing bugs. However, two included images of western conifer seed bugs which is a type of leaffooted bug. One message had images of boxelder bugs and one person included a very nice picture of a wheel bug found on their porch.