In the 1950s, entomologists Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland conducted research into the "sex life of the screwworm fly." A quarter of a million dollars in government money, spent on decades of studying the reproduction of an insect with a name that sounds silly.
But it wasn't silly, and Knipling and Bushland's work went on to save agriculture enormous amounts of money in the decades to come. This week, Knipling and Bushland have been posthumously awarded a Golden Goose, a prize that honours "scientists whose federally funded work may have been considered silly, odd, or obscure when first conducted but has resulted in significant benefits to society."
The screwworm fly can be a massive problem when raising livestock. The flies lay their eggs in flesh wounds in living animals. When the eggs hatch, the larvae feast on the living flesh of their host. This is known as flystrike, and can be fatal. Treating and preventing it costs vast sums of money.
This is where Knipling and Bushman enter. They discovered that female screwworm flies are monogamous, only mating with one male in their entire lives. Male screwworm flies, on the other hand, mate with many females. If they could somehow sterilise male screwworm flies, and release these sterile males in large numbers, perhaps they could eliminate the fly entirely by tricking the females into wasting their single mating on a sterile male.
[...] And, going forward, it could do even more. It's been identified as a potential solution for eradicating populations of malaria- and zika-carrying mosquitoes, as well as other crop-destroying pests.
A similar story is available at NPR.
(Score: 1) by _1156277 on Saturday June 25 2016, @06:25AM
That will certainly work... until a single discriminating female saves the species...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday June 25 2016, @06:51AM
> SCREWworm fly
> monogamous
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 25 2016, @07:25AM
Read carefully. It's only the female flies that are monogamous. The male flies screw as many female flies as possible.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2016, @07:29AM
> screwWORM fly
> female screwworm FLIES are monogamous
Obviously, females are promiscuous only in their youth, settling down once they mature.
The males, on the other hand...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2016, @07:23AM
I love being raped to death by spiky worms!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2016, @03:46PM
I'd have guessed that the amount of radiation needed to sterilize a fly would be enough to create abnormal behavior or worse.
What about people? It's male birth control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2016, @09:51PM
These flies only live 1-3 months. If you want to reduce your lifespan to match theirs, you don't need to worry about any pregnancies regardless if you're sterilized or not.