https://www.instagram.com/p/C6ml1frr2a8/
Los Angeles launched a pilot program to release tens of thousands of irradiated, lab-raised mosquitoes into the local environment.
These mosquitoes are all male and have been sterilized by radiation, so the hope is that they will find wild female mates and impregnate them with dead-end sperm, rendering the resulting eggs worthless.
The strategy is an example of the ways humans are deploying novel technology to fight the spread of invasive mosquitoes and the diseases they can carry, as climate change, global trade and urbanization propel the pests into new territory.
"They've evolved specifically to exploit humans as their hosts, and so we are constantly in an arms race against them," Daniel Hahn, a professor in the University of Florida's Department of Entomology and Nematology, says.