How a billion sterilized flies a year protect livestock from flesh-eating screwworms

Summary

A joint Panama-U.S. government facility breeds, sterilizes, and releases over a billion screwworm flies annually to combat the New World screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae feed on living flesh of warm-blooded animals, causing severe damage to livestock and wildlife. The program uses sterile insect technique (SIT) — irradiating male flies to make them sterile, then releasing them to mate with wild females, which then produce no offspring. This decades-long effort has successfully eradicated screwworms from North and Central America down to Panama, maintaining a biological barrier at the Darién Gap to prevent reinfestation from South America.

Source

bskyHow a billion sterilized flies a year protect livestock from flesh-eating screwwormsnationalgeographic.com