Abstract
A total of 167,291 Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles males heterozygous for a M3 (male) linked complex aberration with 80–90% sterility was released daily over a 2-wk period to ascertain their mating competitiveness in nature. A dominant temperature sensitive lethal was employed as the primary sexing method for the release males. Competitiveness was determined by releasing both fluorescent dye dusted laboratory colonized virgin females and virgin female F1 progeny of wild caught females as well as by sampling endemic females in the study area. Matings by released males were confirmed by egg sterility and genetically by a recessive marker closely linked to the M3 allele. Released males were highly competitive with released laboratory colonized females but were uncompetitive with the wild females, which suggested that colonization and/or prolonged laboratory maintenance had selected an assortive mating behavior. These results underscore the importance of using wild females to evaluate the competitiveness of altered genotypes and of incorporating as much endemic genetic material as possible into the release genome.
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