I thought mosquitoes were meant to disappear as the temperatures drop. Why then last night was I was awoken hourly by their high pitched drone, forced to switch on the light, grab a book, and swat another one? Not the stuff of a good night’s sleep. My dreams were wrecked by fears of West Nile Virus.

So, in wanting to ‘know thine enemy’, I’ve been reading up about the little suckers today. Apparently, it is their rapacious sweet tooth that drives them.

Some science bUffs at Hebrew U (recently ranked in the top 100 Universities in the world by Newsweek) decided to exploit the mosquitoes’ thirst for sweets to bring about their demise - by spraying acacia trees with a sugar solution that had been spiked with the oral insecticide Spinosad. Bill Gates et al, listen up, this research promises to show how we can eliminate almost the entire mosquito population in a particular area, potentially saving millions of lives.

Apparently, Schlein and his co-researcher, Günter Müller, in the Department of Parasitology at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School’s have proven that mosquitoes are ‘picky eaters’ (ok it makes me feel a bit special) and are attracted to certain nectar plants over others, even when a large variety is available.

With that in mind, Schlein believes that we can completely control the spread of mosquitoes by targeting their delicacies and spraying them with the Spinosad-sugar solution bait.

Thankfully, Spinosad is an environmental “reduced-risk” oral insecticide with low toxicity to other insects, birds and mammals. According to his research, this could really work well in desert or savannah regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of malaria is increasing due to environmental changes, drug resistance and mosquito resistance to conventional insecticides.

So we are talking about planting trees that appear tempting; a relatively easy, environmentally friendly and cheap solution against mosquitoes, and the deathly diseases that they transmit such as Malaria. How about that, huh?

Now while they might bother me at night, the death brought about in Africa from diseases spread by mosquitoes such as Malaria is no joke. A shocking estimated ONE MILLION people die every year from Malaria in Africa, 90% of which die in sub-saharan Africa. Tragically, 71% of these deaths are children under five. We are talking about malaria killing one child every thirty seconds in this region.

Schlein and Muller’s work, which essentially boils down to a natural trap of a tree seems like a fantastic out of the box solution to me. No room for a nectar laced tree in my NY apartment, but I’ll sleep better at night knowing that research like this is being carried out for future generations.