Acanthocrios furnarii (Cordero & Vogelsang, 1928)

Roth, Steffen, Hahn, Steffen, Montani, María Eugenia & Coscarón, María Del Carmen, 2023, Contribution to the Cimicidae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) fauna from Argentina: biology and geographical distribution, Zootaxa 5323 (4), pp. 587-594 : 591

First observations of Acanthocrios furnarii attacking humans

Four individuals (two nymphs of first instar, one nymph of second instar, and one of third instar) were collected in the living room of a flat in La Plata (Province of Buenos Aires) and delivered to the Museo de La Plata in 2017. According to the information given by the affected persons the bugs were attacking an inhabitant sitting on a chair near a window and sucked (or attempted to suck) blood. No information is available about possible hosts of the bugs or nearby nests of breeding birds. The nymphs were identified as A. furnarii based on the characters described and illustrated by Usinger (1966). Even if Di Iorio et al. (2010) claimed that the characters provided by Usinger (1966) are unsatisfactory to distinguish adults of the genera Acanthocrios and Ornithocoris , following Usinger’s key for nymphs the identification of our material was unequivocal. Unfortunately, a DNA barcode analysis failed to confirm our species identification.

Cimicidae living on bats and birds have regularly been reported to attack humans in houses harbouring bat roosts or bird nests ( Kolb et al., 2009). The first record of A. furnarii attacking humans confirms this and is no surprise considering the species ecology. A. furnarii , is a widespread species using different bird species as hosts, among them species commonly breeding in urban areas, such as the Argentine goldfinch ( Sicalis flaveola pelzelni Sclater, 1872 ) ( Thraupidae ), the house wren ( Troglodytes aedon Vieillot, 1809 ) ( Troglodytidae ), or the house sparrow ( Passer domesticus Linnaeus, 1758 ) ( Passeridae ) ( Di Iorio et al., 2013).