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."

Comments

A very green solution, except...

[sirrunsalot]

Fascinating, but I can only imagine this is a very expensive solution to implement since the sterilized males must be specially bred, and, well, it's not exactly a self-propagating solution. Of course, that's also a benefit since as far as solutions that tamper with biology go, self-limiting processes can't very well get out of control. The article doesn't discuss what effect one male has or any practical implications of the solution.

Although the technology certainly doesn't exist to implement it, I wonder what would happen if some sort of genetic time-bomb—something like the mechanism for the Hayflick Limit—were used to create a bug that reproduces for a while, then it's descendants become sterile. It would still be self-limiting, more potent than one bug, and still pesticide-free! Well the hard part of scientific discovery is done, now it'll only take fifty years of toil in the lab to achieve it...

insect sex is not fun

[Gearoid_Murphy]

insect sex is notoriously violent, insects do not use sex as a bonding mechanism so there's no pleasure, in the sense we know, associated with it. Many different species have developed various strategies to work around this, such as scrapers on the end of the males penis to remove rivals sperm. I kid you not, god help me, I'm after a bottle of wine and can't be bothered finding the link.