Using Mosquitoes to Save Birds

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kiwikiu (photo by Zach Pezzillo- free use)

from an article at CNN

This story takes place in Hawaii, a long distance from Michigan, but the methodology that may save the critically endangered kiwikiu is fascinating.

These birds, also known as the Maui parrotbill honeycreeper Pseudonestor xanthophrys, have been driven ever higher into the mountains to escape an introduced mosquito that carries both a deadly avian malaria and an avian pox. The honeycreepers have no natural defense. The problem mosquitos can not survive the cold elevations, so those places are the last refuges for the birds.

Here's the hopeful solution- a high-tech genetic fix. A coalition of conservation organizations, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the State of Hawaii, the National Park Service, and the group Birds, Not Mosquitoes, are deploying a strategy called the Incompatible Insect Technique. Male mosquitoes are raised in a lab and infected with Wolbachia bacteria.

Males do not bite, so they pose no threat to the birds. All they do is mate. But when these males mate with a wild female the mosquito eggs are not viable. The mosquito population shrinks.

Millions of these treated mosquitoes are being released by drones over Hawaii.


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