Insect pests and radiation: SIT, inherited sterility, biological control | Hacker News Reader

Insect pests and radiation: SIT, inherited sterility, biological control

iaea.org

32 pointssuspecting17 comments

What percentage of the irradiated mosquitos die before mating? or were successful in bearing offspring? Seems like a very 'blunt' method, but perhaps cheaper than the Oxitec (genetic engineering) approach?

As I understand it, this approach is used with insects that mate just once. You flood the population with sterile males. As the population is suppressed, the males become increasingly effective at preventing the females from reproducing (since a smaller and smaller fraction of the male population is fertile). The population collapses at a superexponential rate, and can be driven to zero.

Ok, so why isn't this ACTUALLY being done?

California is being absolutely inundated by invasive mosquitos from China. They're a proper scourge. Absolutely awful, and they're everywhere in huge numbers.

Some company recently withdrew its application to do this kind of sterile single generation mosquito population control program. I can't find any valid reason why.

They're invasive. They don't belong. Why WOULDN'T the government want to eradicate them locally?

I suppose breeding infertile mosquitos in sufficient numbers is a challenge...

> Ok, so why isn't this ACTUALLY being done?

It is. For instance, it was used to eradicate screwworm in North and Central America, and continues to be used in Panama to prevent this pest from recolonizing the continent.

https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/exhibits/show/sto...

according to this [1], it's difficult to package them up and deliver them without harming them. if it was an easier / more lucrative problem to solve then surely it would be solved.

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.aba6251

Which baffles me. Because these invasive species literally got here by stowing away in containers on ships. In the least hospitable transportation. And we can't do it even with dedicated design controls and science?

It will work better on species that disperse widely. Otherwise, you have to release the sterilized males all over the area where the insect exists, and that could be difficult.

I got to intern with the IAEA way back when. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are honestly the least interesting parts of their work.

We do similar things in horticulture with intense blue light. It will readily kill the larvae and eggs of many insect pests. Not UV, but blue.

I initially mis-read this as IKEA and was ready for a much more bizarre read

Same here. I have to admit that the story was a lot more exciting in my mind before I realized my mistake.

Have You ever seen the movie "The Fly?"

For those looking for details about how nuclear technology is used here:

> Irradiation, such as with gamma rays and X-rays, is used to sterilize mass-reared insects

https://www.iaea.org/topics/sterile-insect-technique

In case you were wondering why you were downvoted, the 4th paragraph of the main link covers all this.

It looks like this is from the primary source (IAEA) and the submission is an almost verbatim copy. However, it's a similarly short snippet.

Here is another article including the illustrations copied on the blog post which has more detail:

IAEA How to Control Insect Pests Using Radiation https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/how-to-control-insect-p...

Thanks! We changed the URL to that from https://www.karlsnotes.com/how-the-iaea-uses-nuclear-technol....

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