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Title: Sterilized Flies To Be Released In Order To Stop Flesh-Eating Maggot
Infestation

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/03/2...

Beeftopia shares a report from CBS News: The U.S. government is preparing to
breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and
southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot. That sounds like the plot of a
horror movie, but it is part of the government's plans for protecting the
U.S. from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and
even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before. The
targeted pest is the flesh-eating larva of the New World Screwworm fly. The
U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to ramp up the breeding and distribution
of adult male flies -- sterilizing them with radiation before releasing them.
They mate with females in the wild, and the eggs laid by the female aren't
fertilized and don't hatch. There are fewer larvae, and over time, the fly
population dies out. It is more effective and environmentally friendly than
spraying the pest into oblivion, and it is how the U.S. and other nations
north of Panama eradicated the same pest decades ago. Sterile flies from a
factory in Panama kept the flies contained there for years, but the pest
appeared in southern Mexico late last year. [...] The USDA expects a new
screwworm fly factory to be up and running in southern Mexico by July 2026.
It plans to open a fly distribution center in southern Texas by the end of
the year so that it can import and distribute flies from Panama if necessary.
The New World screwworm fly is a tropical species, unable to survive
Midwestern or Great Plains winters, so it was a seasonal scourge. Still, the
U.S. and Mexico bred and released more than 94 billion sterile flies from
1962 through 1975 to eradicate the pest, according to the USDA. The numbers
need to be large enough that females in the wild can't help but hook up with
sterile males for mating. One biological trait gives fly fighters a crucial
wing up: Females mate only once in their weekslong adult lives. "A similar
approach to certain species of mosquito is being debated," adds Beeftopia.
"The impact on ecosystems is unclear."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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