As we head into the rainy season, you will certainly notice an increase in the number of pesky mosquitoes in your life.
What is the Lee County Mosquito Control District doing to bring down their numbers? Believe it or not, last month agency professionals released more mosquitoes – 30,000 of them.
These are male mosquitoes that have been sterilized.
Male mosquitoes don’t bite. Females do: They need the blood to fertilize their eggs.
“We are able to separate the females from the males in the lab, and then we irradiate the males to sterilize them,” said Rachel Morreale, who runs the agency’s lab. “And then we take those sterilized males to the field and release them.”
The males go on to mate with the females.
“And then the females will lay eggs that do not hatch,” Morreale continues. “That's how we have the population declines.”
The program targets the aedes aegypti mosquito, an invasive species that is the vector for such dangerous viruses as dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya.
The agency used this method successfully a few years ago on Captiva. Last month, it implemented the technique again in the Edison Park neighborhood of Fort Myers.
The researchers are also looking to measure how far the sterilized males travel. The insects are covered in a fluorescent powder, then trapped and counted.
The sterile insect technique has been used since the 1950s. The agency hopes to use it throughout the county as the rainy season continues in Southwest Florida.
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