The Collier County Mosquito Control District is launching a sterile insect program to eliminate disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Aedes Aegypti is a type of mosquito that carries diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, and Zika. This species is resistant to most mosquito control techniques — except this one.
Collier County is joining forces with other Florida counties that use sterile, non-biting male mosquitoes to control the Aedes aegypti population.
"It's a no-spray way of killing off the local mosquito," said Brent Phalen, an entomologist with Red Source Technologies.
Most Florida residents and visitors understand the ongoing battle against mosquitoes.
"Aedes aegypti is known as a container-breeding mosquito," said Keira Lucas, deputy executive director of the Collier County Mosquito Control District. "It's found in containers of standing water around people's homes — things like birdbaths, buckets, broken water fountains and tires. They're everywhere, and they're in neighborhoods just like this one. That's why we're targeting residential areas in particular."
Scientists hope this technique proves more effective than spraying for disease-carrying mosquitoes.
"Today we're starting our pilot trial on sterile insect technique," Lucas said.
Entomologists like Phalen collect aedes aegypti mosquitoes specifically from Florida and run them through an X-ray.
"We put them in our X-ray devices," Phalen said. "That makes them reproductively sterile. It's equivalent to neutering or spaying your pet. They're still the same — they just can't reproduce."
More than 650,000 of these non-biting male mosquitoes are being released in areas like Golden Gate City, where traps show high levels of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
"We're going to be releasing mosquitoes every single week for 28 weeks," Lucas said. "So throughout the entire rainy season, we hope to never see that drastic increase in July."
Collier is one of only a few Gulf Coast counties using this sterile insect program.
"It is a big advancement," said Collier Mosquito Control Board commissioner Reg Buxton. "Mosquitoes are on the losing end of this one."
If the program proves successful in Collier, mosquito control officials plan to expand the effort with additional releases.
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