Word: mosquito
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...advocates of keeping government as limited and as close to the people as possible, the impact of 13 may be precisely the opposite. It will give Brown and the legislature in Sacramento virtual life-or-death power over the state's 4,500 local special districts (including fire, hospital, mosquito control, irrigation), 1,120 school districts, 415 cities and 58 counties. Predicted University of California Professor David Shulman: "Local government will appear as the supplicant at the court of the Governor...
When nine inches of rain pounded New Orleans in one day early last month, the downpour left behind containers and pools of stagnating water that were perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. That was a bonus for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which had already picked New Orleans as the site for the first extensive test of mosquito control not by chemical or hormonal means but by another kind of mosquito...
...predator mosquito that has raised the hopes of USDA scientists is a creature with the formidable name of Toxorhynchites rutilus rutilus. During its larval stage in stagnant water, the mosquito feeds on the larvae of more common, biting and disease-carrying cousins, like the Aedes aegypti, which also breeds in pools and water-filled containers. Although the Tx. rutilus is found from Florida to Canada and as far west as Texas, it is not very prolific by insect standards and does not exist naturally in numbers large enough to control the population of other mosquitoes. That deficiency presents no problem...
...Focks will set up in New Orleans two 40-hectare (100-acre) sites, one as a control and one for experimentation. During this summer, he will release in the test area about 1,000 female Toxorhynchites, which will lay eggs that hatch into predatory larvae. Because the New Orleans mosquito control board has kept records on the Aedes aegypti for four years, any significant decrease in its numbers will be apparent. "We know the Toxorhynchites will be effective," declares Focks, "and the cost could be only pennies per acre...
...what happens after Tx. rutilus does in large numbers of the prey mosquitoes? Does it turn, in its adult stage, to bigger meals?like man? Fortunately, the bug's proboscis cannot penetrate the skin of animal or human, and the adult depends for food only on flower nectar and plant detritus. Thus for mosquito control, as Focks puts it, "the Toxorhynchites is a neat package...