The Mexican fruit fly (Anastrepha ludens) is one of the world’s most damaging insect pests. A key method for managing them is the sterile insect technique, in which sterile male flies are mass-reared and released into the wild, whereupon they mate with wild females, which then fail to produce offspring. Determining the precise age of mass-reared fruit flies is a critical step in the sterile insect technique, and researchers in Mexico have applied machine-learning algorithms that can accurately measure the age of fruit fly pupae to properly time irradiation. (Photo by Andrés Diaz Cervantes)