MOSQUITOES that spread dengue fever can be killed before they reach adulthood with insecticides spread by their unwitting parents.
One way to reduce mosquito numbers is to target their young by spraying breeding sites. But how do you find them all? of Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, UK, wondered if they could get adult mosquitoes to do this work for them.
Instead of spraying insecticide, they used a powder form of the larvicide pyriproxyfen, which sticks to the adults鈥� bodies but doesn鈥檛 harm them. The idea was to place cloth impregnated with the powder at mosquito gathering sites, where adults would become coated in powder and then spread it to multiple breeding sites.
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When Devine鈥檚 team put cloths in gathering sites in a cemetery in Iquitos, Peru, where mosquitoes carry dengue, the pyriproxyfen spread to 98 per cent of the 鈥渟entinel鈥� breeding sites set up by the team. This wiped out at least 95 per cent of the larvae at each site, 10 times the number that would die if no action is taken ().
Next, Devine鈥檚 team want to see if the approach works with malarial mosquitoes.