August 31, 2007
The destruction of larval tissue and the development of replacing organs from special groups of
The destruction of larval tissue and the development of replacing organs from special groups of cells, derived of course from the embryo, and carrying on the continuity of cell-lineage to the adult, are among the most remarkable facts connected with the life-story of Bed Bugs. The process of tissue-destruction is known as "histolysis"; the rebuilding process is called "histogenesis." Considerable difference of opinion has existed as to factors causing histolysis, and for a summary of the conflicting or complementary theories, the reader is referred to the work of L.F. Henneguy (1904, pp. 677-684). In the histolysis of the two-winged flies, wandering amoeboid cells–like the white corpuscles or leucocytes of vertebrate blood–have been observed destroying the larval tissues that need to be broken down, as they destroy invading micro-organisms in the body. But students of the internal changes that accompany transformation in Bed Bugs of other orders have often been unable to observe such devouring activity of these "phagocytes," and attribute the dissolution of the larval tissues to internal chemical changes. The fact that in all bed bug transformation a part, and in many a large part, of the larval organs pass over to the pupa and imago, suggests that only those structures whose work is done are broken down through the action of internally formed destructive substances, and one function of the phagocytes is to act as scavengers by devouring what has become effete and useless.