"The discovery of this new form of auditory-motor interaction is so novel, it will open up a whole new area of basic research, covering the range of disciplines from neurophysiology to the behavioral ecology of mating strategies," said Gibson. The research could also help control mosquito populations. One big hope for scientists and public health officials is to create sterile males in the lab, which would then be released into the wild to mate with disease-carrying females. The problem with that plan is that in making the males impotent, something else might be broken in the males that would make females not want to mate with them, thus defeating the purpose of the experiment. But now scientists could listen to mosquito songs and readily tell if the engineered males were as successful as their wild counterparts at mating with females. "This could be a great way to assess the sexiness of transgenic mosquitoes," said Laura Harrington of Cornell University, a co-author on the study. Once a female mosquito mates she shows little interest in mating again. If she mated with a male that doesn't have viable sperm, the population of mosquitoes would drop. One method that would not likely work, say the authors, is broadcasting the sounds of mate-ready mosquitoes to deter natural mating. Plus, the buzz of artificial mosquito love songs would likely annoy any humans in the area, since the auditory range of mosquito love songs is well within human hearing range. All of this research is based on super-glued mosquitoes in the laboratory. Before any sterilized males are tested and released, Gibson points out that more research is needed to confirm that the same principles will work with free-flying mosquitoes. Related Links: |
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