Maybe when we think of the city of Los Angeles we do so imagining the legendary Inglewood, the Hollywood Hills, its movie studios or its always populous downtown, but let’s not imagine the Californian city as an agricultural power.
However, it is. And a lot. So much so that the Los Angeles city council is terrified by a tiny plague of Mediterranean fruit flies, detecting three specimens in its parks and gardens —yes, three in total— for which they propose a very ambitious eradication plan: the controlled release of two million fruit flies.
Scientifically known as Ceratitis capitata or, popularly, medfly either medflythe Mediterranean fruit fly has a devastating potential as an invasive species in certain trees such as orange or lemon treesas well as other fruit and vegetable cultivars that are abundant in Los Angeles County.
To avoid this, the city council’s plan involves release up to 2.25 million Mediterranean fruit flies. However, it is not just any type of fly. All of those released are male, but sterile, flies that have been purposely bred at the military base in Los Alamitos. Marked with a dye visible under ultraviolet light, these flies are easily identifiable.
The trick of this species of Trojan horse is that, despite being sterile, these males can reproduce, but they will generate infertile eggs after mating. This way, The females, even if they end up laying eggs, will never develop new insects.
The strategy is not new. It is known as SIT (sterile insect technique or SIT) and has been successfully tested on other pests such as the tsetse fly in Zanzibar or the Mexican fruit fly in northern Mexico.
In this way, as explained Xataka and Los Angeles Timesa perimeter of action will be created where They will distribute up to 250,000 flies per square milereleasing them for three or four days with the intention that they mate with the fertile flies and end up producing those infertile eggs.
However, the Los Angeles City Council has also published several extra tips that its citizens and merchants must carry out so as not to increase the chances that the medfly proliferate. Among them, they advise residents who market their fruits to refrain from doing so or, if they dispose of the fruits, to use double garbage bags.
Images | Katja Schulz (Flickr) and CFDA
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