A breakthrough technique harnessing two methods to target disease-carrying mosquitoes was able to effectively eradicate buzzing biters in two test sites in China, according to research published on Thursday.Aedes albopictus
Researchers harnessed two population control methods: the use of radiation — which effectively sterilises mosquitoes — and a strain of bacteria called Wolbachia that leaves mosquito eggs dead on arrival. And the average number of female mosquitoes — which transmit disease to humans when they bite — caught by traps fell by between 83 and 94 percent.The results were also borne out by a decline of nearly 97 percent in bites suffered by locals — which in turn shifted attitudes among residents, who were initially sceptical of the project’s plan to release more mosquitoes into the local area.
The IIT method involves a bacteria called Wolbachia. When males infected with it mate with female mosquitoes that aren’t infected, their eggs don’t hatch. To overcome that, researchers decided to subject their Wolbachia-infected lab-reared mosquitoes to low-level irradiation, which rendered the females sterile but left the males able to reproduce.
Armbruster, in a review commissioned by the journal Nature that published the research on Thursday, said the study produced “striking results”.
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