Dear All,
I want to comment about insects sterilisation http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_066.html.
Years ago, when I was in college, I made a paper about this for Quantitative Ecology/Population Dynamic lesson.
I made a mathematical model of a hypothetical population of a species which exposed to a new hermaprodhite mutant. It was started with 1:1:1 proportion of each male, female, and a hermaprodhite.
This hermaprodhite mutant will produce another hermaprodhite when it mates with female, produce male when it mates with male, and produce a “straight hermaprodhite” when mate with other hermaprodhite. (A straight hermaprodhite, is not bisexual, and it will not mating to each other, but could mate to female, male, and ‘bisexual’ hermaprodhite; and all of its mating will produce a ‘straight hermaprodhite’)
In this model, after a few generation, male and straight hermaprodhite will dominate the population. And in 11th generation, there will be a 100% of straight hermaprodhite population, and since they don’t mate each other, the population will collapse to zero.
This is only a mathematical model of a hypothetical population, which as far as I can remember was modelling a genetic experiments on wasp population somewhere in Japan. The rule of reproduction implemented in this model was modeled after this genetic experiments.
I don’t know exactly how these experts modified those poor wasp’s gene.
When I made this paper, I thought that this experiments would work and successful–at least according what was forecasted by my mathematical model, but then again, you didn’t mention it in you column. If you didn’t mention it, there will be only 2 possibilities: the experiments is not succesfull, or it never exists at all.
Then I started to wonder, if this experiments exist and sucessfull, why we still have mosquitos until today?
So, what I want to ask you is: is these genetically-population-sterilisation experiment was real or a myth or a rumor?