In an experiment with global implications, Australian scientists have successfully wiped out more than 80% of disease-carrying mosquitoes in trial locations across north Queensland. In JCU laboratories, researchers bred almost 20 million mosquitoes, infecting males with bacteria that made them sterile. Then, last summer, they released over three million of them in three towns on the Cassowary Coast. The sterile male mosquitoes didn't bite or spread disease, but when they mated with wild females, the resulting eggs didn't hatch, and the population crashed.
Since the Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa, wiping them out in Australia wouldn't do much ecological damage in the country. "The main ecological impact would be to restore the ecosystem to how it was before the mosquitoes invaded," according to Verily.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/10/australia/australia-mosquito-disease-experiment-intl/index.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
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