During large-scale evaluations of the sterile insect release method for eradicating fruit flies in the Mariana Islands and Hawaii in 1962–63, (Steiner et al. in press) a rapid method was needed for separating sterile flies from those that had emerged and dispersed naturally. The 5 to 10 million flies that were released weekly required periodic identification of marked individuals in 1800 trap collections to show overflooding ratios attained, dispersal, and longevity. Existing methods did not permit adequate sampling of the fly populations.
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Loren F. Steiner (1965) studied this question.