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Thousands of sterile mosquitoes will be released in Alicante to curb population
The plan could wipe out up to 80% of the disease-carrying tiger mosquito population on the Costa Blanca
Mosquitoes are known to carry more than 20 exotic diseases, including the West Nile Virus, dengue fever, yellow fever, chikungunya virus and two types of encephalitis and are a nasty pest all across Spain, especially during the summer months. In recent years, the Asian tiger mosquito has also set up camp here, and its numbers have exploded.
It may seem counterintuitive, but to tackle this growing problem, the Valencian government plans to release hundreds of thousands of the critters into the environment in Alicante. The trick here is that all of the specimens are sterile males, which don’t sting. But their job is to mate with the females, which do bite, who will then be unable to produce any offspring, instead of the several dozen eggs each mosquito lays each season.
This measure has already been trialled in both Valencia and Castellón with great success. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the ‘Sterile Insect Technique’ (SIT) has reduced the tiger mosquito population by up to 80% in several towns since it was introduced back in 2016.
The government is hoping to replicate these results throughout the Costa Blanca, but the project is currently still in the planning phase and according to a Ministry spokesperson, “the release will probably be considered for next year.”
This summer, 1.3 million male tiger mosquitoes sterilised by irradiation were released in the Viveros gardens and overall, 177 hectares of public parks and green areas in the Valencian Community have been treated in the last four years.
This type of treatment doesn’t harm the insects in any way aside from making them sterile and it’s being piloted alongside several other natural remedies. Another promising study involves increasing the amount of naturally-occurring bacteria in tiger mosquitoes, which makes their eggs non-viable without killing the insect.
These techniques could also be extended to common mosquitoes, the culprits behind the West Nile virus, which has led to six deaths this summer in southern Spain.
Images: GVA
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