verilys-automated-mosquito-factory-accelerates-the-fight-against-zika

Verily partnered with MosquitoMate, a Kentucky-based sterile mosquito breeder, and Fresno's local authority, the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District, to release a million insects a week through the end of 2017. His team used a sieve-like device to sort the sexes by size in their pupal stage, and then gave each mosquito another look under a microscope before shipping them from Kentucky to California, where district officials released the bugs by hand, shaking them out of cardboard tubes. If this summer's trial proves effective, Mulligan and Dobson hope they could expand to other places in California and wipe out the existing pockets of Aedes aegypti before they become a permanent feature of the landscape. Its ultimate goal is to be able to make more mosquito factories, ready to ship all over the world whenever a new mosquito-borne disease strikes.