Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Australian Experiment Eliminates Over 80% of Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes

An experiment carried out in Australia's northern Queensland region eliminated over 80% of disease-carrying mosquitoes there:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/10/australia/australia-mosquito-disease-experiment-intl/index.html

The experiment, conducted by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and James Cook University (JCU), targeted Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread deadly diseases such as dengue fever and Zika.
In JCU laboratories, researchers bred almost 20 million mosquitoes, infecting males with bacteria that made them sterile. Then, last summer, they released over three million of them in three towns on the Cassowary Coast.
The sterile male mosquitoes didn't bite or spread disease, but when they mated with wild females, the resulting eggs didn't hatch, and the population crashed.
With the rise of more severe mosquito-borne diseases including Zika and Dengue, it's important for India to get a handle on its mosquito problems.

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