Mosquitoes are pesky things. Having grown up in Southern California, I’m lucky to only associate these insects with camping and hiking. But if you live in a mosquito-dense area, you know just how annoying they can be.
If you don’t have a mosquito net around your porch, you are likely to be bit whenever you sit outside on a summer evening. These bites hurt, not to mention they are unsightly. But there is another reason to want to be as far away from mosquitoes as possible: they can carry diseases.
These little guys go from person to person, biting them and sucking up a bit of their blood. This makes the perfect circumstance for sicknesses to spread. For this reason, scientists around the world have begun to imagine what life would be like without the unnerving disease carriers. They have even taken steps to turn that dream into a reality.
Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and James Cook University (JCU) have teamed up to tackle the problem. They designed an experiment that successfully wiped out over 80% of the disease-carrying mosquitoes in north Queensland, and their research has huge implications for the future.
Researchers focused on the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is an especially harmful species in Australia. Rob Grenfell, the CSIRO Director of Health and Biosecurity described it as “one of the world’s most dangerous pests.” He added, “Although the majority of mosquitoes don’t spread diseases, the three mostly deadly types — the Aedes, Anopheles and Culex — are found almost all over the world and are responsible for around (17%) of infectious disease transmissions globally.”
Mosquitoes are well-known for their ability to cause chaos. The outbreak of the Zika virus in 2015 serves as an infamous example of the species’ destructive power. Millions of people around were infected, and the disaster led to many more babies being born with neurological disorders. The mosquitoes’ behavior left a huge mark on the humanity as a whole.
Getting these guys out of the territory was a top priority for involved scientists. They used a form of genetic modification to annihilate the population, and the experiment was ultimately successful. First researchers from JCU bred nearly 20 million mosquitoes in their laboratories. Next, they intentionally infected the males with a bacteria that made them sterile.
Then it was time to introduce them to the wild population. The mosquitoes were released, and they were left to mate with the wild females. Three million of the lab-raised mosquitoes were unleashed in three towns on the Cassowary Coast.
These released mosquitoes were incapable of biting or spreading diseases, but they could get the attention of the females. After the insects mated, the scientists tracked the female population. These mosquitoes still produced eggs, but they didn’t hatch. The population crumbled.
Researchers on both sides were encouraged by the success of the experiment. They are now looking to expand the influence of their research, ultimately aiming to end the species for good.
“We learned a lot from collaborating on this first tropical trial,” shared Kyran Staunton from James Cook University. “We’re excited to see how this approach might be applied in other regions where Aedes aegypti poses a threat to life and health.”
While the results of this research are cutting-edge, the technique used to conduct the experiment isn’t exactly new. It is called the Sterile Insect Technique, and it has been around since the 1950s. The difference now is that it is finally being used on mosquitoes.
Although CSIRO and JCU had been hoping to wipe out the mosquito population entirely, they managed to reach most of their goal. They are still looking into ways to finish off the job, making life easier for many Australian humans. The best part is that since this species is native to Africa and only invasive to Australia, getting rid of them completely won’t significantly harm the country’s ecosystem.
“The main ecological impact would be to restore the ecosystem to how it was before the mosquitoes invaded,” Verily informed its viewers.
What a great idea for research. Let’s all hope that these scientists continue in their success so that we can all be mosquito bite free.
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