Lecture 4: Human/Insect Interactions

Question 1

How can insects injure humans?

Answer 1

• Direct injury

- Indirect injury

Question 2

Direct injury

Answer 2

• Bites/stings (poison/toxins)
• Annoyance
• Allergies
• Phobias/Psychoses

Question 3

Indirect injury

Answer 3

• Disease transmission

- Little to no direct effect; predominant effect is disease transmission

Question 4

Entomophobia/Arachnophobia

Answer 4

• Unusual or unreasonable fear of insects, spiders, or scorpions
• Can be cultural, genetic, societal
• Leads to panic/irrational response

Question 5

Delusional Parasitosis

Answer 5

• Patient complains of having bugs crawling under their skin

- Mental disorder, not disease

Question 6

Annoyance/Nuisance

Answer 6

• Being annoyed by bugs
• Can overlap with feeding annoyance and allergic respose
• Includes infestations of insects

Question 7

Feeding/Biting Annoyance

Answer 7

-After effects can include rash, itching, welts, and other allergic reactions

Question 8

Feeding Annoyance

Answer 8

• Chewing Lice: vertebrate hosts, organic fragments of skin and secretions
• Sucking Lice: feed on blood of many domesticated animals
• Bed Bugs: feed on blood at night
• Kissing bugs and Assassin bugs
• Mites and ticks
• Fleas

Question 9

Contact Reactions

Answer 9

• Arthropod antigens can cause an allergic reaction with our immune system
• Often due to inhaled allergens: Dust mites/Cockroaches
• Oral secretions of ectoparasitic arthropods

Question 10

Response to venom/toxin

Answer 10

• Bites and stings/ spines, hairs, fluids with toxins
• Local inflammation is the most common reponse
• Hymenoptera: only insects with stinger

Question 11

Myiasis

Answer 11

• Arthropods feeding on living or dead tissue on a vertebrate host
• Obligatory: required for arthropod development
• Facultative: arthropod normally free living