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Scientists Use Sex-Crazed Bugs As Pesticide
ByronScott writes "In today's 'gross news' category, some female insects just might be getting lucky. As an alternative to toxic pesticides, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have created 'super-sexed' sterilized male leafhoppers to knock bug boots with females in the wild, resulting in decreased populations. Yes, that means that the female bugs will miss out on the joys of motherhood, but the idea that the insects will be having some fun instead of being gassed to death by poisons is pretty cool."
from tfa "uval and his team are using a high-protein, bacteria enhanced “stud” breakfast to feed to the males before they’re released." The bugs aren't genetically super sexed but due to eating habits are more attractive.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
Sterile insect technique. Developed in the 1950's.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
The sterile insect technique dates to the 1950s, and has been used with great success in suppressing the screw-worm (eradicated in the US in 1982). An animal infested with screw worm maggots can die simply from the tissue damage as the maggots "screw" into their flesh. It's one of the few species against which there is an intentional attempt at extermination, and I can't disagree with it.
The technique inspired the Nebula Award-winning science fiction story The Screwfly Solution. In the story, the technique does not so much go wrong as horribly right.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Supposedly the human male's penis is also designed to remove other male's sperm from the vaginal tract.
Monstar L
Fascinating, but I can only imagine this is a very expensive solution to implement since the sterilized males must be specially bred
The technique has been used worldwide with other insects for decades. You may not even know it ever existed, but there used to be flies which laid larvae in your flesh, where they would gestate and then eat their way out of your body. Yeah. Not nice. We got rid of that this way. (Not globally -- the species remains in a few other places)
See the first episode of season 3 of Futurama.