Is Zika In All Of Pasadena


A California City Is Fending Off Zika by Releasing 40,000 Mosquitoes Every Week

All Track Exterminators in Pasadena Ca is watching for news and the latest development of mosquitoes and the possibility of the spread of Zeka. Here is an interesting article on the release of mosquitoes in California

A mob of mosquitoes is a scourge. And the cardboard tube Jodi Holeman holds in her hands buzzes with more than enough mosquitoes to fill a scourges ranks—a thousand, to be exact. She uncaps the cylinder and taps gently, encouraging the stragglers out. Get to work, boys, she says.

On this Tuesday morning in July, Holeman and her colleagues at the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District are releasing 20 tubes full of mosquitoes in Clovis, California, at the northern tip of Fresno County in the Central Valley. They do this twice weekly, bringing a scourge upon the same 20 spots in the same subdivision, where the two-car-garage houses range in color from beige to brown. By summer’s end, they will have blanketed the subdivision with 400,000 mosquitoes.

The point of this? To rid the neighborhood of mosquitoes.

Counterintuitive, sure. But these are no ordinary mosquitoes. They’re not locals, for one: They were flown in that night from Kentucky, where the biotech startup Mosquito Mate breeds mosquitoes carrying a bacterium called Wolbachia within their cells. And the mosquitoes in the tube are all male. Once Holeman sets them free, the idea is that they’ll mate with local females that don’t carry Wolbachia. And the offspring won’t be able to hatch.

The route Mosquito Mate is following in Clovis is less fraught. And it involves a different agency. Earlier this summer, the company submitted data to the Environmental Protection Agency to get Wolbachia in a related mosquito, Aedes albopictus, approved as a pesticide—an easier process than the FDA’s. Three states had already tested Aedes albopictus. If the Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti work in Clovis, approval for that species could follow. Together, they could herald a new wave of mosquito-control strategies.

But will it work with this new mosquito? To get a brood of doomed eggs, you must get these males to mate. These bugs have spent their lives in a lab and the last 12 hours crowded in cardboard tubes—so they’re not exactly studs. It’s a numbers game, says Holeman. To increase the odds, the district will release orders of magnitude more males than there are females in the district.

So: 400,000 male mosquitoes, released over 10 weeks and 120 acres of the suburban landscape. That’s the plan. Hopefully, it will be enough.

While this season in California continues to be under a drought. It is still important to reduce pooled water location during the summer as this is the easiest place to breed mosquitos in. Contact All Track Exterminators for a free estimate on all your pest needs

 

Releasing male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria. Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District

Summertime brings hotter weather and Drywood Termites. Don’t allow the wood-munching, pesky bugs to eat your valuable asset. Contact us for a free termite inspection

 

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1055 E Colorado Blvd Suite #500, Pasadena, California, 91106

Call Us: 626-344-2464
https://alltrackexterminators.com/

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