screwworm fly

As the female screwworm fly gets only one chance to mate in her maximum 30-day lifespan, if you can get her to have sex with a sterile male, you've effectively ended her hopes of motherhood.

Atkinson, a psychology professor at Stanford University prior to coming to NSF, recalled that “politicians were also focused on frivolous grants, like the sexual behavior of the screwworm fly. … Why was NSF funding that kind of research?”

As the Libya desk officer at the State Department during the Reagan administration, I was involved in a quiet effort to skirt around strict U.S. sanctions against Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s regime to combat an outbreak of the virulent New World screwworm fly among North Africa’s sheep population.

������ biologists discovered turned out to be even more frightening: the reappearance of a parasite known as the New World screwworm fly that had not been seen in the United States since the 1970s and had been considered eradicated.

Symptoms were first reported in wild deer in July, and laboratory tests in late September confirmed the presence of the screwworm, which is the larva of the screwworm fly.