chemosterilant, any chemical compound used to control economically destructive or disease-causing pests (usually insects) by causing temporary or permanent sterility of one or both of the sexes or preventing maturation of the young to a sexually functional adult stage. The mating of sterilized insects with fertile insects produces no offspring, and if the number of sterile insects is kept constant, the percentage of sterile insects will increase, and fewer young will be produced in each successive generation.
Laboratory-reared insects are sterilized by feeding them treated foods or by placing them in contact with treated materials. Care must be exercised in the direct application of a chemosterilant to a natural population, because most chemosterilants cause genetic changes and are thus dangerous both to beneficial animals and to man.
Chemosterilants can be grouped into two types of compounds, depending on their action. Antimetabolites such as amethopterin and aminopterin cause sterility in female insects by preventing egg formation. In some species, certain doses may stop eggs from hatching or larvae from maturing. Alkylating agents such as tepa, metepa, and apholate cause changes in genetic material and chromosomal damage in both male and female reproductive cells.
The female hormone mestranol can cause sterility in rodents, and triethylenemelamine can prevent the division of reproductive cells in male birds.
Terpenes, found in some evergreen trees and ferns, are similar in chemical structure to substances called juvenile hormones, which are present in all insects during larval development but must be absent during the transition from egg or larva to adult. Application of an interfering terpene at this critical time will prevent eggs from hatching or larvae from becoming sexually mature adults. Other hormones or synthetic substitutes may cause young of some species to become mature adults with deformed reproductive organs that make them unable to copulate.