The Lee County Mosquito Control District has reached a new milestone, becoming the first to release sterile mosquitoes by drone.<\/p>\n
Rachel Morreale, manager of the Lee County Mosquito District sterile insect technique program, said that the drone will release mosquitoes more effectively by reaching areas the district couldn\u2019t before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we like the drone and why it\u2019s so beneficial is that it helps us get a better distribution of these mosquitoes,\u201d she said. \u201cBefore we were stuck with whatever we could access by road, so having this drone means that we can actually put the mosquitoes in places where they want to be and get a better even spread of mosquitoes all around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee County Mosquito District uses a Skydio X10 drone. The drone\u2019s release cassette can carry up to 35,000 mosquitoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can compact them (mosquitoes) down and they handle it quite well,\u201d Morreale said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t release that much in one spot ever. We would spread that around so that that cassette would be moving over quite a large area.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Skydio\u2019s official website<\/a>, the drone can fly at a top speed of 45 mph and has a maximum flight time of 40 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve actually had really good results out of our drone release so far,\u201d Morreale said. \u201cI\u2019m very positive that this method is very good and low impact for these mosquitoes.\u201d<\/p>\n The operation is part of the district\u2019s sterile insect technique program, which aims to reduce the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito population by releasing lab-raised, sterilized male mosquitoes that will mate with wild female mosquitoes, resulting in eggs that won\u2019t hatch. Only male mosquitoes are released because they don\u2019t bite like their female counterparts.<\/p>\n The district developed a strain of mosquitoes that is native to Captiva and Fort Myers. It\u2019s a 10-day process to raise the mosquitoes to adulthood and then sterilize them using X-rays \u2013 the same ones humans receive during a doctor\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is our own homegrown local strain of mosquitoes that are being applied here,\u201d Morreale said. \u201cWe have our own colony in the lab. From egg to adult, you\u2019re looking at about a week and then we will irradiate the males once they\u2019re fully emerged, and then release.\u201d<\/p>\n Every sterilized mosquito is marked with a fluorescent powder that will help Lee County Mosquito Control District distinguish and measure the mosquitoes\u2019 survival and recapture rates in the wild.<\/p>\n Support provided by the Franklin R. Edwards Memorial Fellowship.\u00a0WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and\u00a0donate\u00a0<\/a>now. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lee County Mosquito Control District has reached a new milestone, becoming the first to release sterile mosquitoes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-286781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}