Female mosquitoes cannot tell if a male she has mated with is fertile or “spermless” and unable to fertilise her eggs.
The discovery supports the idea it will be possible to control the size of the malaria-carrying mosquito population by introducing a genetic change to make male mosquitoes sterile.
Such a method would rely on females mating unknowingly with males modified in this way and therefore failing to produce any offspring.
Read more at Imperial College London