There are no sentiments in the war with mosquitoes. Researchers have reached for radioactive radiation and bacteria

I know that today more and more animals are being talked about, but nobody in their right mind probably will agree that they should be mosquitoes. Nobody likes mosquitoes, after all. Let them die.

The Chinese government , which has to contend with the local tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) population, follows the same assumption. This species is known for being very invasive (this year even fake news about the fact that tiger mosquito reached Poland) and from the fact that it spreads many dangerous diseases.

Dengue, yellow fever, western Nile fever - these are just a few ailments that very much like spreading on the wings of this mosquito species. Its growing population in China simply raises too many threats. That is why the local authorities said it was time to reduce it a bit.

How to get rid of mosquitoes? Here are two interesting methods

Both methods boil down to the release of slightly modified male tiger mosquitoes. The first one is based on sterilization of males using radioactive radiation. This treatment is largely reminiscent of radiotherapy used in the fight against cancer, only instead of destroying cancer cells, it is something else.

The whole trick consists in the fact that the individuals treated in this way become sterile, so that each komarzyca, which in the mating season chooses such a laboratory male will not be born. Simple and effective. Unfortunately, the disadvantage of this method is choosing the right dose of radiation. Too small will not cause the desired effect - i.e. sterilization. Too large a dose, in turn, makes the treated males are simply too weak and have a huge problem with finding a willing female.

The second method, which supposedly gives much better results, is the infection of laboratory mosquitoes with Wolbachia bacteria. This strain has the same effect as irradiation with radioactive radiation. Males infected with Wolbachia are unable to fertilize wild living females and again - the mosquito population is decreasing.

The huge problem with this method is that everything comes down to a really precise selection of individuals. If several females are infected with Wolbachia with males, propagation proceeds without problems. Compatible (actually the same) bacterial strains stop interfering with anything and ... the number of mosquitoes does not change. Ie. it succumbs, but only in the transitional period, when mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia in a given territory displace those with a different set of bacteria.

Chinese combo, or 2 in 1

In a recent publication in the journal Nature , Chinese scientists, in collaboration with an international team of experts, boast of an effective combination of these two methods. In practice, it looked as if 200 million mosquitoes infected with three strains of Wolbachia bacteria were bred in laboratory conditions, and then exposed to small doses of radiation. Too weak to sterilize males, but ... large enough to cause infertility in all laboratory females. This effect allows for a total lack of selection due to the sex of mosquitoes, thanks to which the combined method is much faster and cheaper to implement.

How has it worked in practice, will you ask? This method was tested in 2016-2017 near two islands, on the Pearl River crossing the Chinese city of Guangzhou. In the first year, the number of females feeding on human blood and spreading the plague decreased in this area by 83 percent. A year later it was already 94 percent. which translated into a reduction in the number of bites by 97%. Imagine using this method in Masuria and sigh together to this beautiful vision of reality.

This extremely effective method has, of course, been designed to fight one of the most dangerous species of mosquito. It would not hurt, however, if we tested it on European varieties. I think we'll all agree that it sounds like a wonderful plan.

There are no sentiments in the war with mosquitoes. Researchers have reached for radioactive radiation and bacteria