New studies show that a specific type of fungus native to East Africa can infect mosquitoes and reduce their lifespan by two-thirds - to just seven days.
The problem started innocuously enough: Caulerpa taxifolia, a type of red algae not native to the Mediterranean shore, was spotted off the shores of the grand Oceanographic Museum of Monaco.
So the native South African took the insects (Scarabaeus satyrus) into the Johannesburg planetarium where she could control the type of star fields a beetle might see overhead.