The discouraging headline is perhaps another indicator of the growing infertility among adults, a source of frustration for infertile couples as well as people around them.
Over the following weeks, in between laying eggs and consuming the infertile ones, she tends to her developing fungal garden, fertilizing it with feces.
More speculatively, the team is pondering whether it might be possible to create males which can outplay their un-engineered cousins at the mating game, despite being infertile.
Their first step was to look for genes which, when disabled, would render male mosquitoes infertile. They began their hunt in fruit flies, a stalwart of genetic research.