THE BLOODSUCKING INSECTS OF THE PHILIPPINES^ 
By Charles S. Banks “ 
{From the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines, Los Banos) 
0 
Insects and 6ther arthropods that obtain all or a part of 
their sustenance from other animals during the whole or at 
some specific period of their lives are called parasites. Such 
parasites may be either facultative (that is, living for a part 
of their life upon other animals) or obligatory (requiring a 
continued existence on the host as a sine qua non of their o\vn 
existence and propagation). 
Confining this definition solely to insects, it may be stated 
that parasitism is not a faculty of any particular order or fa- 
mily of these organisms, but finds representatives among several 
orders that are only remotely related, so far as phylogeny is 
concerned. 
The geological history of the Insecta plainly demonstrates 
that they were originally plant feeders, and that the habit of 
obtaining nutriment from animals, whether of their own class 
or of widely different phyla, is one that has been acquired during 
long ages of more or less intimate association among them, and 
between them and other animals. 
Parasitism and predatoriness, especially the former, have 
been looked upon by some students as necessarily involving a 
condition tending toward, if not actually predisposing to, mor- 
phological degeneration of the parasite. But a casual glance 
at the various modifications of mouth parts, legs, wings, and 
even of the body itself will suffice to show that each of these 
modifications has tended toward a better adaptation of the in- 
sect to its special environment with the least amount of dis- 
comfort to its host and, therefore, with the greatest degree of 
security to itself. 
BEDBUGS 
The bedbug (Cimex lectularius L.), a universal companion 
of man though a very unwillingly accepted one, has its body 
‘ Read at the twelfth annual meeting of the Asamblea Medico-Farma- 
ceutica de Filipinas, February 9, 1918. 
* Professor of entomology and chief of the department of entomology, 
University of the Philippines. 
169 
