About the Authors

Michelle Walters

Contributed equally to this work with: Michelle Walters, Neil I. Morrison

Affiliation Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Centers for Plant Health Science and Technology, United States Department of Agriculture, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America

Neil I. Morrison

Contributed equally to this work with: Michelle Walters, Neil I. Morrison

Affiliation Oxitec Limited, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

John Claus

Affiliation Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Centers for Plant Health Science and Technology, United States Department of Agriculture, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America

Guolei Tang

Affiliation Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Centers for Plant Health Science and Technology, United States Department of Agriculture, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America

Caroline E. Phillips

Affiliation Oxitec Limited, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Robin Young

Affiliation Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

Richard T. Zink

Affiliations Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Centers for Plant Health Science and Technology, United States Department of Agriculture, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America, Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Centers for Plant Health Science and Technology, United States Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America

Luke Alphey

luke.alphey@oxitec.com

Affiliations Oxitec Limited, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

The authors have the following competing interest: Those authors affiliated to Oxitec Limited (Dr. Morrison, Dr. Phillips and Dr. Alphey) are or were employees of this company, which therefore provided salary and other support for the research program; these authors also have shares or share options in Oxitec Ltd. In addition, the engineered insect strain described is a product in development by Oxitec Ltd. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online on the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NM MW JC LA RZ. Performed the experiments: MW JC GT CP. Analyzed the data: RY NM. Wrote the paper: NM MW LA.