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Fig. 1. | BMC Biology

Fig. 1.

From: SIT 2.0: 21st Century genetic technology for the screwworm sterile-insect program

Fig. 1.

Genetics-based elimination of a major insect pest on a continental scale—the New World screwworm program. Eradication efforts against the New World screwworm started in the southern USA in 1958 after two field trials to assess the effectiveness of the release of sterile insects, then a new concept. The first, on Sanibel Island off Florida in 1953, achieved good sterility but failed to eradicate the pest due to migration from the mainland. A trial in 1954 on the more remote Curacao successfully eliminated the target population—no fertile eggs were detected in sentinel animals after 9 weeks, or three screwworm generations—and the target population was declared eradicated after five months. Following regional successes from 1959, in 1966 the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was able to declare the entire US free of screwworm. Efforts continued and in 1991 the Mexico-United States Screwworm Commission declared eradication of screwworm from Mexico. The program also provided sterile flies to Libya, where New World screwworm, native only to the Americas, was discovered in 1988—it was eradicated by 1992. Continuing southwards in the Americas, screwworm was eradicated from Belize and Guatemala by 1994, from Honduras and El Salvador by 1996, and so to Panama, where a permanent barrier was established in the early 2000s involving releases of sterile flies by the Panama–US Commission for the Eradication of Screwworm (COPEG) to prevent reinvasion from South America, which remain infested, as do various Caribbean islands (adapted from [11])

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