Scientists Use Sex-Crazed Bugs As Pesticide 107
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by
samzenpus
from the doin'-it-hopper-style dept.
from the doin'-it-hopper-style dept.
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."
Re:Cool ! (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems likely as it's really hard to breed a bunch of sterile bugs! :-)
A very green solution, except... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]—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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing New Here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I looked over the various articles and it doesn't mention anything about using Biotechnological approaches. What seems to be new and exciting, according to the articles, is that they're feeding the males something which is supposed to be make them more enticing to the females so that the females will be more interested in the sterile males than the non-sterile males.
I remember hearing about the sterile insect technique back in high-school in the 70s. Even the articles in question say that the concept isn't new--the only new part seems to be using attractive males.
Invasive Stranger (Score:3, Interesting)
A sterilised insect is actually a foreign entity. I do recognise that feeding the population involves killing insects but a surplus of these insects might be good for the environment when it occurs. It seems that we are trying to micro manage an environment that we really do not understand. My area is loaded with pythons, monitor lizards, iguanas, a three foot long exotic rat, many species of parrots and more plants than I can name all of which are foreign to Florida. The funny thing is I enjoy most of the invaders that our government makes war upon. I particularly like fishing for huge talapia as well as rainbow and peacock bass. All three of those fish are foreign species.
Re:QFTS (Score:1, Interesting)
Or, like the bed bug, which has more recently evolved into bypassing the reproductive tract altogether--the male pierces the female in the abdomen and injects his sperm into her ovaries directly. Of course, they're pretty horny buggers, and they do the same to other males.
Re:insect sex is not fun (Score:1, Interesting)
PZ Myers on beetle sex: You want to put WHAT in my what??!? [scienceblogs.com]
No, it is just that women ain't faithful (Score:3, Interesting)
The scraping is true and happens in all species where the female has no concept of fidelity. You can also judge the fidelity of the female by the relative size of the male balls. The bigger, the more sperm he produces. NOT to fertilize the egg, but to flood out his rivals sperm and create a protective covering against further attempts.
Biology, messing with your preconceptions.