The Key deer, a federally endangered subspecies of the white-tailed deer found only in the Florida Keys, has come under attack from a very nasty parasitic pest, the screwworm.
Cochliomyia hominivorax, more commonly known as the New World screwworm fly or screwworm, for short, has shown up again 30-years after it was eradicated in Florida. The screwworm is now threatening the Key deer that live solely on Little Pine Key to Sugarloaf Key and a few small surrounding islands.
Screwworm is a species of parasitic fly that lay their eggs in open wounds, even tiny little wounds. The fly larvae hatch and eat the living tissue of warm-blooded animals. There are five species of Cochliomyia, but only one species of screwworm fly in the genus. It is present in the New World tropics.
According to Dan Clark, Manager of the Florida Keys Wildlife Refuges Complex, over 50 deer and a number of local companion animals were discovered to be infested with the gruesome screwworm. All the deer were in such bad condition they had to be euthanized, including eight in the last week.
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service confirmed the screwworm’s presence. Screwworm is a reportable species to the state veterinarian in the United States if discovered on livestock because of the economic losses associated with infestations.
Screwworm was eradicated in the United States in 1982 using the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) method. With SIT, sterile screwworm flies are released into the environment to stop breeding, and it has worked successfully in the U.S. before and in Guatemala and Belize in 1994, El Salvador in 1995, and Honduras in 1996.
Campaigns against the screwworm fly are still going on in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Jamaica with financial assistance from the United States Department of Agriculture. It is believed this screwworm infestation may have come from Cuba, although this is just speculation, reports the Atlantic. But Cuba does still have a screwworm problem.
In a prepared statement, the USDA has declared an Agricultural Emergency in Monroe County, Florida, with the SIT applications to be implemented in Big Pine and No Name keys beginning on Tuesday, Oct. 11th.
Other response efforts include trapping flies to determine the extent of the infestation and conducting disease surveillance to look for additional cases in animals.