Reproductive interference for insect control

Insect pests are a persistent and growing threat to human livelihoods and health because they damage economically important crops and spread disease. The pressing global challenge of combating such pests is also being exacerbated by the climate crisis, leading to migration of insect vectors into previously unoccupied conurbations, creating new human-pest exposures. The project will focus on reproductive interference - whereby courtship and copulation of one species / population is interrupted or disturbed by another. In the context of insect control this is usually referred to as satyrization and it works because the consequences (particularly costs) of hybrid mating are often unidirectional leading to the competitive exclusion of a harmful species (or population) by a more benign one.

The project is a collaboration with the Earlham and Pirbright Institutes, world-leading research centres for bioinformatics and the development of genetic technologies, respectively. A test case for insect control via satyrization in the fruitfly model will be developed to identify the loci and regulatory mechanisms contributing to satyrization as well as the underpinning signal and receivers.