These are some of the most problematic/disease causing of the mosquitoes but also notably mosquitoes in the Aedes genus are essentially the only mosquitoes that are "hunting" during the day. All the other mosquitoes operate almost exclusively in the evening and at nighttime.
So by eliminating these mosquitoes a major disease vector is eliminated but at the same time it completely eliminates mosquitoes during the day (i.e. the main time when you are out and about trying to enjoy the summer).
There are different things you can do to mosquitos with different techniques. The article discusses several different techniques. Some eliminate disease-spreading mosquitos, some eliminate the mosquitos. In Singapore, the latter was tried out. It is not the case that Singapore used chemicals.
lets say on the order of 1 billion, and let's assume the effectivity doesn't change when considering the 30% unaffected population
it would need to be applied to the surviving 30% repeatedly:
0.3 ^ N = 1 / 1B
so N = log(1B)/log(10/3) = ~17.2 times.
I predict nature protects itself with diversity: some of the male and female wild type will have natural aversion from, attraction to or neutral stance the modified Wolbachia carriers.
I predict that those mosquito family lines that happen to be more Wolbachia-carrier averse become enriched over time.
There is an energetic cost to maintaining a parasitic lifeform, and that energetic term will always favor immunity against the parasite.
> The approach has succeeded at the scale of cities. In a randomized trial in Singapore, releases of Wolbachia-infected males cut mosquito populations by 85 percent compared to control areas and dengue infections by roughly 70 percent.
(mosquitos infected with Wolbachia are both more resistant to diseases, and fail to reproduce in the case of infected male x uninfected female)
I'm super prone to getting bitten so having to apply insect repellent and restrict myself to wearing certain clothes is such a pain.
Get a 5 gallon bucket, add water/grass/leaves/dunk and let it sit for a few weeks. Every few weeks add more dunks. Put a stick in there so small animals don't get stuck when trying to get a drink.
Though:
- It won't stop breeding in other standing water
- Depending on where you live, it could decimate the food source of other animals
- It attacks all mosquito's not just blood suckers
- I understand that there are conflicting reports on its effects on amphibians. I'm not sure how reliable the negative reviews are, or if it is "big citronella" sourced scare, but you may want to be cautious of which water sources you use them in.
[1]. https://github.com/Ildaron/Laser_control [2]. https://github.com/tanakasan3/mosquito-laser
> This item is currently available for pre-order. Orders will be shipped within 120 calendar days after payment confirmation.
It's been nine years since that blurb was updated supposedly.
https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/jimwong-38623042/world...
[0] https://anopheles-genomic-surveillance.github.io/home.html
I'd be much more concerned about the changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping (like filling the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases) than about changes that would, almost certainly, reduce harm and have only extremely unlikely and hypothetical risks.
I agree that many of the risks are hypothetical, but I disagree that we can simply dismiss them. Taking a decent amount of time to understand cause and effect on ecosystems seems like a perfectly prudent thing to me.
Kind of, because every time you stomp out one of Mother Nature's ways to keep the human population in check, you contribute to letting the population exceed carrying capacity, which leads to things like:
> changes humans do to our ecosystems that we know cause harm, but aren't stopping
Mostly because the rich world eradicated a lot of them to stop malaria.
Of course, once we were safe we told the rest of the world they had to live (and die) with with malaria, because we had discovered environmentalism.
Growing up my sister got dengue, so I hate mosquitoes, she was fine, I know dengue was no joke, but I always worry we make too many assumptions as humans, only to be proven wrong by nature somehow.
Or do you reserve most of your concern for just the few species of human disease-carrying mosquito?
Kind of a genuine question, because I've observed over the years people popping in to this topic to exclaim deep concern for the potential ecological impacts of intentionally extincting a couple of species -- that most biologists reportedly agree aren't keystone species. Meanwhile, species loss continues to occur globally for a variety of reasons and yet it's still really difficult to get the average person to care very much about that.
The psychology here is peculiar and I don't understand it.
Many such comments are very dumb, asking 'and how do you feel about viruses, screwworms, etc.?', but since you say this is a genuine question: mosquitoes are numerous and we know that they represent a source of food for many species (bats, birds, other insects). As far as I know, there is genuine debate among scientists about the role that mosquitoes play in their ecosystems. Everyone here has seen species of animals and plants eradicated and then being reintroduced or replaced, when we realise what role they were playing.
Again, assuming you're asking in good faith: you're asking why these commenters are so concerned while humanity is eradicating species all the time anyway: these are not the same populations... I'd wager there is a big overlap between those wondering about consequences and those taking action for the planet (not eating animal products, not flying, etc.). Similarly, I'd wager there's overlap between those posting such illogical retorts, and those eating animals at every meal and driving their car daily.
I see the same ridiculous retorts in HN debates about the condition of animals.
There's an excellent book on the impact of the mosquito on humanity, and a brief overview of some of that subject here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes.... These species of mosquito are and have been one of the most significant threats to human health for all of our existence.
I don't think argument-from-ignorance should be more convincing here than it would be on any other subject. There is some debate among researchers, sure, but published biologists have been making arguments in favor of eradication for over 20 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.htm...). If someone is being intellectually honest in objecting to this on the grounds of the fragility of ecosystems, then they must also be an equally loud voice against the use and manufacture of glyphosate. That one chemical alone is already having a far greater impact on insect populations, yet you can buy it at your local hardware stores.
So yeah, I genuinely don't understand the reasoning here. It feels like a dumber version of the trolley problem, where a perceived inaction that has far larger negative consequences is preferable to an action with more limited ones -- except in this case, it's not even right to describe our current impacts on ecosystems as "inaction".
I suspect that if an article were published tomorrow that found that, through some previously-unknown mechanism, the expected rise in global temperatures over the next 10 years would have a side-effect of killing all mosquito populations, that article wouldn't even make the front page of HN. Nobody much would care, aside from those few recurring voices mourning our future.
More cynically, I also suspect that since the worst impacts on human health are occurring in tropical populations, westerners find it much easier to argue in favor of protecting this particular pest.
Would an alien species contemplating the eradication of wheat be correct to think "that won't hurt Homo sapiens much, wheat makes up <1% of our taxonomic category 'things that grow in dirt!'?
I've been following this subject since at least Olivia Judson's article was published back in 2003. Over the last 23 years, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet made a strong case that Anopheles was a necessary part of the ecosystem. If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
The most vocal arguments against are all of the kind we're seeing here: "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley), "we should assume they're necessary" (and yet all other necessary critters seem to be optional), "something needs them, we just don't know what" (in 23 years, biologists have so far identified a single spider that maybe or maybe not depends on them).
And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
> If your alien species were unable to identify wheat as an important food source, one would question how they managed to figure out interstellar travel.
Per your prior point: we are causing food chain collapse all over the globe. We are not an alien species with a good track record on this.
> "we don't know what might happen" (a statement of the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature that goes back in fiction to at least Mary Shelley)
Per your prior point: the unintended consequences of science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
The following two arguments are not ones that I've made, and aren't necessary to justify extreme caution.
> And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
> I would be easily swayed by evidence of large-scale ecosystem destabilization if Anopheles were eradicated. To date, not only is there no such evidence, but there is some evidence to the contrary (species of mosquito have been introduced to island habitats where they went on to have significant effects on local animal populations).
Yes I'm in the same boat as you. But note that this is a fundamentally different position than "other things eat things that humans call 'mosquitos' so it should be fine."
Granted, but also food chain collapse has been happening for a while now and yet Anopheles is still not anything's preferred food source. It really seems to fit the definition of a strictly non-beneficial parasite.
> ...science meddling with nature also goes back in reality to the widespread food chain collapse that our science is already unintentionally causing all over the globe.
There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
> > And these are the arguments that condemn a million people a year to death.
> Obviously the people arguing against you believe there's a chance that altering course would be far, far worse than this already-not-good outcome.
I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this. The more likely scenario is that the millionish dead per year is happening in other people's countries and therefore it's not thought about at all.
I wonder what the factor-of-10 scale would be for the number of Zika-affected births in the US before Americans suddenly became overwhelmingly in favor of eradicating these mosquito species. 100? 1,000? 10,000? Over-under at 10,000, I guess?
I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
... to our knowledge. Obviously the entire disagreement is about how complete our knowledge is and how much we can trust our understanding of how complete it is.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
No, there's not. I literally work in drug development and use science every day to improve people's lives. Respond to the arguments leveled instead of trying to conjure up a backing "origin of opinion" that you can dismiss more easily.
> I seriously, seriously doubt the people making this argument have thought all that hard about this.
Huh? I would bet the people who are skeptical of this idea are, on average, more informed than the people who love it. Because obviously the pitch of "want to eradicate mosquitos?" is: fuck yes absolutely please, fuck mosquitos they suck. Regardless of one's understanding of their truly horrible health effects elsewhere. The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
> I don't think I got much in the way of any new insight to how other people think about this, but thanks for the discussion, anyway.
And likewise, I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
I replied to the words you wrote. If what you wrote doesn't say what you meant to say, fine, but don't come at me for it.
> The starting position is: get rid of them. The 2nd order consideration is "hmm, what problems might that cause?"
Alright, I can go along with that. Then the 3rd order consideration would have to be, "okay, here are the possible problems it could cause, and here is the evidence for and against."
And that is where I've been working this subject from from the beginning of this thread.
> I came in requesting evidence for your assumptions and you've confirmed you do not have any.
...other than the multiple links to discussions, books, papers, and opinion pieces from subject matter experts, you mean? I notice none of your comments happened to come with any supporting evidence for your argument. We're supposed to just believe that eradicating these pests would cause a worse outcome than the current amount of human misery they cause worldwide because... why? Because of your hypothetical aliens and because humans use science to cause ecological harm?
Maybe take a step back and reassess.
> There's a whiff of "science causes bad things" here, which is what I keep hoping isn't the unstated foundation of the pro-mosquito argument.
Yes, absolutely agreed we're talking about the 3rd order of questioning. In particular the question: can eradicating these mosquitos destroy a food chain that we end up caring about?
Not one of the links you've posted actually addresses this question, except maybe the Archive.ph link which is broken for me (feel free to re-post if you can).
The supporting argument for food chain effects is that when a food source is in an ecosystem for long enough, it will be exploited by something. This is a basic feature of natural systems: free energy doesn't just go sitting around for long.
The question is then if you remove this particular food source over the course of a few years, will alternatives take its place fast enough? You have not posted any evidence of this.
The null hypothesis should be no, since evolution does not typically operate on timescales like this. If 1) all the animals that eat these mosquitos just as easily eat other mosquitos and 2) those other mosquitos can easily breed to make up the difference, then sure! But again: you have not posted any evidence of this claim and it is not at all obvious it should be assumed.
Here are the arguments you and your posted links have made:
1. Mosquitos are bad (agreed)
2. We can kill just the ones that hurt humans (agreed)
3. There are other mosquitos (agreed)
4. Those other ones will take their place in the food chain (not evidenced)
5. Other food chain disruptions are happening anyway (agreed)
6. Therefore this one is probably fine (not evidenced)
You have not addressed the specific point of contention.
I'm not versed in everything with all these species, but I believe everything has a purpose, look if someone goes all out into mosquitoes and proves they had absolutely no purpose, I'll concede, I just think its worth studying these types of things. For example, some years I fight wasps near my house, then the following year, I'm fighting fire ants. If I don't eradicate one or the other, they show up the next year, every year I fight one or the other, I assume they compete with one another. I wish I could curb stomp both from ever coming back, fire ants make me bust out with sores all over, however, I know me killing them from my lawn / property isn't killing ALL of them.
Well, what would come out of the outback once the rabbits are gone? Since we know the state of Australian wildlife before the rabbits, the answer is "nothing".
If there's an abandoned lot and you eradicate the mosquitoes by removing the water filled abandoned car tires, the existing ecosystem does pretty well. In a similar way you can willfully decide to make a livestock pond either a mosquito factory or mosquito free and mosquito free has not resulted in any problems.
Local eradication programs have successfully worked for centuries, at least. What makes this story interesting is its very wide ranging and likely very expensive.
(aside: There are lots of visible downsides to lots of local eradications of lots of things)
> this effort is interesting because it's much less local
So in other words it's very different from all the success cases you're alluding to?
Do we want to eradicate mosquitoes?
Yes; fuck them.
We (intentionally or no, mostly not) cause the extinction of hundreds to thousands of species every year for much more mundane reasons: deforestation is the big one, climate change another. And that buys us arguably nothing but enriching people that benefit from the process of deforestation and climate change--folks that're economically desperate enough to log illegally, and energy barons. These extinctions are mostly tragic, and the net benefit to human societies is likely negative.
Mosquitoes are fucking evil. They kill more humans every year than any other animal. Malaria is only the most well-known disease they spread; see also dengue ("breakbone fever", named for what it feels like), West Nile virus, and more. Those that malaria doesn't kill are frequently left with a low-level chronic infection that makes them less effective as people. Malaria and mosquitoes kill children, disable the working population, and economically cripple entire nations.
As best we can tell, things that eat mosquitoes also eat other things. But I'd vote for nuking the mozzies from orbit even if that weren't the case. They're such an unmitigated cause of human suffering and hardship.
They're not evil, they have zero idea about the consequences of their actions. I think this viewpoint is why people are hesitant to just make things go instinct because people don't like them. Yes there might be good scientific / humanitarian reasons for it, but mosquitoes "being evil" isn't one of them.
Anyone knows more about the author? The info there is a bit scant and I'd like to read more from her.
I found one Maya Rosen online[1] but she seems to be devoted to Jewish texts, Judaism, and all that. Does not seem related to this, but it might be her?
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
Larvicides can still be a thing though. No benefit in keeping those around.
She mates only once, which is why releasing sterile males works to reduce mosquito populations.
https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/38495-what-we-got-wrong-abo...
the paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222...
Does anything eat them as food? Wouldn't it be environmentally damaging to remove a source of food for X?
Joking aside, the consensus seems to be that the effect of removing disease-carrying mosquitoes (not all mosquitoes) from the environment is minor compared to how many lives it can save.
Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?
That's called risk.
Pointing out risk is not "fearmongering" lmao
Pointing out risk is a kind of fearmongering when it's technically real but too small to be worth worrying about. Asteroid impact is a real risk too.
In Europe though, where aedes aegypti didn't exist 20 years ago, it's probably the other way around: what did the introduction of this new species damage? (apart from making the summer unbearable outside if any of your neighbour isn't very strict with standing water elimination)
I don't get the "but what if it's somewhat - not infinitely - bad" argument? The known good is so dramatically good that we'd need a shocking amount of unknown bad to have made it not worth it. But if I'm choosing between mosquitoes, and say... fish, frogs, and a variety of birds, yes, get rid of the mosquitoes.
We start spraying crops so we can end world hunger (or just make more money) and screwing around with other things and now we're killing bees and other things. This will ultimately come to haunt us.
The death of all bees would count as infinitely bad (in terms of crop pollination) and we're doing a very good job in making that happen.
If it took a couple hundred years for this species to proliferate, it's absolutely plausible that eradicating it in a few years will have surprising second- and third-order effects.
Do you understand that time scales are important here?
There are also species that have invaded areas that are totally impossible for them to reach without seafaring or airfaring human civilizations to carry them.
All terms are made up. Some are useful and some are not. This one is useful.
Merely calling it invasive does not answer that question, ergo it is not a useful term in this conversation.
And yes, timescales do matter. A species can become critical to its new ("invaded") ecosystem within a few hundred years such that removing it within a few years will cause catastrophe.
A billion human lives, or some sad trout who have to eat fruit flies instead. For me, it’s an obvious choice.
I just can’t understand the level of smugness it must take to insist that we must force another billion people to die of horrible diseases like malaria, because you want the moral high ground. How do you even tell yourself that killing all those people is the moral high ground?
Yeah, it gets a bit silly real fast. I've never been accused for forcing a billion to die, so thanks for that.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
In fact, no, they did not say that. They said that the considered balance of the merits strongly favors eradicating the 2% of mosquito species that carry human diseases for someone who gives greater weight to the benefit of saving a billion human lives[0] than to the cost of some trout eating the thousands of other mosquito species instead.
[0] - 700 million contracted mosquito-borne illnesses each year worldwide. Death isn't the only consequence of significance.
If 20,000 humans weren't significantly harmed from disease because of this release, but 70,000 frogs faced starvation, which would you choose?
If we lose those frogs, it most likely would cause a cascade across other species. There are lots of things that eat frogs.
They're only applied to thing we don't want to do.
In reality, it's always true that we don't fully know, so applying the argument always means "let's not do this".
In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.
Not to mention the many species of, e.g., birds, etc., that rely either heavily, or almost entirely, on mosquitoes, as a food source. One does not simply eradicate an entire species, through genetic sorcery, for the entire planet, without causing negative side effects.
This is just like cloud seeding. A few powerful idiots ruin it for everyone else, in the service of accomplishing a specific goal. We are likely experiencing major changes in the regional climates, as a result of cloud seeding. For example, right here in Idaho we are stealing water from clouds floating overhead, through a cloud seeding program primarily driven by Idaho Power. Do I benefit from this? Of course. We use the irrigation water and benefit from the cheap electricity rates. At what expense? Who knows. Somewhere east of us is likely getting royally screwed. As long as we have what we need here, though, who cares about anybody else or the rest of the planet's ecosystem, right?
The hilarious part, to me, is the fact that those who get excited by this idea (obliteration of entire species through genetic engineering) are the selfsame supposed champions of the climate when it comes to "GlObAl WaRmInG", asking for us to send our money to the Guberment to fix the problem. I guess it's not too surprising, since these people don't think for themselves; they are simply following with the TV told them to think.
A gene which incurs a fitness cost will be purged from the population under selection!!
It has been used to suppress screw worm in the United States for decades until the administration cut the funding.
These are almost always a temporary solution that need constant funding and seasonal releases to work. The populations will surge back as soon as it's stopped.
If it's one-and-done, everywhere on Earth (eg smallpox), it can work. If it drags on for decades or isn't rolled out globally (eg malaria) then it won't work.
Several insects are like this. In the species I'm familiar with, the male member breaks off inside the female locking all other males out.
Releasing sterile screwworms in Panama has been the main method of protecting US beef/cattle production from the insects spreading north out of South America.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-to-know-about-the-n...
This is at best a temporary solution.
The US has been funding spraying of coca farms in South America. Roundup is one of the major herbicides. "Roundup Ready" crops are genetically modified to make them resistant to glyphosate. Samples of roundup resistant coca plants had been found in Colombia & Bolivia. It was thought that someone put a lot of effort into genetically modifying the plants, but it turns out that the samples were not GMO but rather mutants. Collaboration between coca growers spread the resistant plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boliviana_negra
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205025108/http://www.wired....
We could in one stroke take half of what multi-billionaires and quasi-trillionaires have hoarded. If they didn't have personal accountants, they wouldn't even notice it, as they have far more money than what they manage to burn through - and we would have the means to "choose" to solve real problems affecting hundreds of millions of people.
It's debatable whether taking half of billionaires' wealth would materially advance the efforts in those areas.
What seems far less debatable is the political consequences of the accummulation of so much wealth — coupled with essentially zero legal restrictions on the use of that wealth in the quest for (governmental) power.
The population of an endangered Australian bat suddenly dropped by up to 16%. No one knows why
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/30/southern...
> White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a fungal disease killing hibernating bats in North America. The fungus, named Pseudogymnoascus destructans (or Pd for short) likely originated in Europe or Asia. Sometime in the early 2000's Pd arrived in North America and attacked vulnerable bat species, resulting in unusual and large die-offs of bats first observed in New York in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread to most US states and Canadian provinces, leaving millions of dead bats in its path. WNS causes high death rates and fast population declines in the species affected by it.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm
I agree they are a nuisance but they do not exist on their own. Many of them spend their time feeding on plants rather than blood.
Bill Gates is involved in this. Always a red flag.
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/list-of-claims-ab...
Anyway since they kill north of half a million folks yearly and infect couple of hundred millions as official minimums, I am more than happy with some other species of small insects take their empty spot. Of course not everybody cares much about poor folks dying quietly half around the world, but some do. One of very few benefits of global warming is the migration of these bastards more north so rich folks in US and Europe will have more personal stake in this topic rather than usual 'oh that's so horrible, next'.
Some minor re-adjustement of ecosystem is more than fine, anyway we do it constantly for rather pathetic reasons if any. I would add ticks, all forms, to the effort.
I completely disagree. This is a reasonable and responsible timeline to look for unintended consequences. Some things, you simply cannot undo.
What if the bacteria (somehow) jumped to monarch butterflies and killed them off? Controlled releases and multi-year environmental studies are the correct and responsible course of action. In fact, when the injected insects are released into an area, the entire thing should be monitored carefully, as each ecosystem might respond differently.
All of that being said, excited to see this adopted more broadly. It's time these fuckwit insects die.
In general, you have to weigh the irreversible cost of unintended consequences with the irreversible cost of known human death from mosquitoes.
People like the author actually belive that there is no chance of real world interactions happening.
Eg what is the bacteria jumps to some other organism? What if it mutates? What if the birds eat the mosquitoes and carry a mutated bacteria elsewhere?
There is a reason why you need autistic level safety for such projects, and even then things like this might happen.
It's completely impossible to guarantee theses things, no matter how long you study it in a lab.
Some people just aren't capable of thinking more than 1 step ahead.