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Pausing Insect Activity
Seasonal dormancy features in the life cycle of many insects. We can harness it for biological control, insect farming, and disease vector management at scale.
Such suspended animation has garnered many different names: hibernation and torpor (in mammals and birds), brumation (in reptiles), diapause and quiescence (in insects and nematodes), aestivation (summer dormancy in vertebrates and invertebrates), hypobiosis, cryptobiosis, and latent life (in microorganisms). The earliest known deliberate use of insect predators was recorded in China around 300 AD: The Asian weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina, had been successfully used for centuries to control citrus pests such as the lychee giant stink bug, Tesseratoma papillossa. But in 1985, a German social insect physiologist Peter-Frank Röseler discovered a much simpler method: a short exposure of the queens to carbon dioxide (hypercapnia) prevents them from entering into winter diapause and stimulates oogenesis within days after treatment.
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