Abstract

Pest insects do enormous damage to human health (transmitting diseases such as dengue fever) and to agriculture (through damaging crops or livestock). Nina’s interdisciplinary research programme explores ecological and genetic aspects of novel methods to control insect populations. She has focussed primarily on transgenic variants of the sterile insect technique, an area-wide method of biological pest control that reduces pest populations by releasing mass-reared sterile insects which compete for mates with wild insects.

Mathematical modelling predicts that a variant with female-specific lethality could also slow or reverse the spread of resistance to other control methods.