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The Fall and Rise of Screwworm

The article explores the history of screwworm, a parasitic fly that plagued livestock in the Americas, its near-eradication through the sterile insect technique, and recent resurgences due to climate change and other factors.

Background

- Screwworms are parasitic fly larvae (maggots) that infest open wounds in warm-blooded animals, including livestock and occasionally humans. An infestation is called myiasis, and it can kill a full-grown cow within days if untreated. - The screwworm's original range spanned much of the southern US, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The annual northward migration described in the article was driven by warming temperatures in spring. - The US Department of Agriculture developed the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) in the 1950s: releasing massive numbers of radiation-sterilized male screwworm flies so that wild females lay infertile eggs, driving the population to extinction locally. - This eradication program, which involved a factory producing hundreds of millions of sterile flies per week, successfully eliminated screwworm from the US by the 1960s and from all of North and Central America by the early 2000s. - The article's "fall and rise" refers to recent setbacks in Panama, where the sterile fly barrier has been weakened, allowing screwworm to re-enter previously cleared areas. This threatens livestock industries across the region and even poses risks to human health.

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  • The Fall and Rise of Screwworm

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    The article traces the history of the screwworm, a devastating livestock pest in the Southern US, and the development of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to eradicate it in the mid-20th century. It then describes the recent resurgence of the New World screwworm in the Florida Keys due to warming climates, threatening livestock and wildlife, and the renewed use of SIT to combat the outbreak.