Zika-carrying mosquitoes haven’t shown up in California yet. But Aedes aegypti–an aggressive, non-native species of mosquito that is known to carry the Zika virus, along with dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and other diseases–arrived in Fresno County in 2013. Traditional methods of mosquito control, such as insecticide spraying programs, don’t work well against the species, which tends to breed in small, hard-to-reach sources of water like dishes under flowerpots. Insecticides can also kill bees and other beneficial insects.

So the city’s mosquito control agency–along with a startup called MosquitoMate, and Verily, the Alphabet subsidiary formerly known as Google Life Sciences–is now testing a new approach called Debug Fresno.

Each week, until December, the team will release 1 million sterile male mosquitoes in two Fresno neighborhoods. When the mosquitoes mate with wild females, the resulting eggs won’t hatch. Females mate only once. (Male mosquitoes don’t bite, so the influx of millions of them shouldn’t annoy humans). In theory, the technique could dramatically reduce or eliminate the Aedes aegypti population before the mosquitoes become infected with a disease like Zika and start spreading it.

Read the source article at fastcompany.com