After they were detected in Mexico in December 2024, the USDA released 165 million dollars to breed these insects at Texas’s Moore Air Base. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name these parasitic flies that lay their eggs in open livestock wounds. The US and Panama have mostly eliminated them from North America through COPEG, which maintains a sterile insect barrier around the Darién Gap.
ANSWER: screwworm flies [or New World screwworm flies or Cochliomyia; accept United States – Panama Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of the Cattle Borer Worm]
[10e] Lab-grown male screwworms are sterilized by zapping their pupae with this radiation. A hypernova may have caused the Ordovician–Silurian mass extinction by creating a “burst” of this highest-frequency radiation.
ANSWER: gamma radiation
[10h] A Uruguayan effort is instead using one of these devices to alter screwworms’ sex determination. These synthetic constructs, like that one inserted into doublesex, exploit selfish genetic elements.
ANSWER: gene drives
<KT, Biology>