Australia has a regular problem with explosions in its mouse population that occur in roughly four year cycles. The number of mice quickly increases to billions and costs Australian agriculture upwards of US $90 million in crop damage.
The problem is so severe that Australian researchers are currently investigating an exotic solution to prevent such population explosions — a genetically modified virus that renders female mice sterile.
The virus is a modified form of he herpes virus that is spread by mouse-to-mouse contact. Once it infects a female mouse, it will prevent sperm from fertilizing eggs. Researchers at Australia’s Co-operative Control of Pest Animals has shown the modified virus works in the laboratory setting, and now wants to test the virus in the field.
That, however, will have to wait for extensive testing to ensure that the virus will not jump the species barrier and infect other animals besides mice. But Australia has experience with using such solutions. It used myomatosis disease 50 years ago to control the rabbit population, and in the 1990s used the calci virus to lower rabbit populations. The calci virus killed an estimated 90 percent of the country’s rabbit population, allowing some ecosystems that were overrun by the animals to begin to recover.
Sources:
Australia invents new mousetrap with herpes virus. Reuters, April 8, 2003.
NT Queens’s Birthday Honours. ABC Rural, October 6, 2002.