Introduction of a male-harming mitochondrial haplotype via 'Trojan Females' achieves population suppression in fruit flies.

ABSTRACT: Pests are a global threat to biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human health. Pest control approaches are thus numerous, but their implementation costly, damaging to non-target species, and ineffective at low population densities. The Trojan Female Technique (TFT) is a prospective self-perpetuating control technique that is species-specific and predicted to be effective at low densities. The goal of the TFT is to harness naturally occurring mutations in the mitochondrial genome that impair male fertility while having no effect on females. Here, we provide proof-of-concept for the TFT, by showing that introduction of a male fertility-impairing mtDNA haplotype into replicated populations of Drosophila melanogaster causes numerical population suppression, with the magnitude of effec

SUBMITTER: Wolff JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5441865 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature