Bedbug bait and trap invented by Simon Fraser University scientists

Such an act of dedication to science how they accomplished "feeding the horde".

These suckers bullied us for thousands of years, but now humankind has this crazy lady on its team so they finally get what they asked for.

Relevant HN discussion on the 'itch that nobody can scratch' refered to in a story on Medium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8769925. That story is about Morgellons, for which some explanations refer to the presence of beg bugs or mites.

I'm surprised blood alone (perhaps heated to body temperature) doesn't attract them.

I expect in the next decade or so, sensors and microrobotics will become good and cheap enough that mechanical pest control will outcompete chemical: finding and squashing the bugs with inhuman reach, patience and thoroughness. Of course the tiny exterma-drones may be pretty creepy-looking, themselves.

I could picture one implementation being a skirt/kill-zone around a bed, such that any bug that feeds is definitively killed before it can return to nesting/breeding spots. So the customer is still the bait... but they quickly win a war of attrition against any local bug population, unless it's being replenished from elsewhere.

Similarly to mosquitoes, bedbugs serve no nessesary propose in the food chain that couldn't be immediately fulfilled and replaced over-night. Bedbugs could indeed be "erased".