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Sonic-powered Mosquito Larvae Eliminator
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "Inventor Michael Nyberg, at the age of 15, developed the idea for a mosquito larvae eradicator after hearing about rising cases of West Nile virus. His company, Larvasonic, has developed these devices. They utilize sonic blasts at certain frequency that rupture the breathing sacs of the larvae, killing them instantly. Remarkably, it does not harm other insects and it is considered a very effective means of destroying problematic mosquito infestations."
...the biotope. Several places they've tried fiddling with nature to stop plagues, like in denmark, they spilt chemicals on small lakes to stop the mosquitos from sitting on it, drowning them instead. What happened? Small birds were dying, not having enough food. Also, in denmark, they tried to stop birds eating their apples from apple farms, pulling huge nets and shooting birds approaching, discovering the birds really didn't like apple, but the bugs inside them, resulting in a great production loss. And - also - a friend of mine is doing a lot of parachute jumping. They found out that the barn swallow living in the hangar were shitting on their chutes, and started to shoot the birds, resulting in a vast amount of flies and mosquitos etc etc etc.
Perhaps not fiddle with nature after all?
roy
Computers are like air conditioners.
- They stop working when you open Windows.
You can't stop evolution from happening, though it doesn't look like mosquitoes will develop a resistance to bats anytime soon...
This is because bats prey on the fundamental design of a mosquito: they can move faster, think faster, sense faster. Developing a resistance to bats will require a change in the entire organism.
I think there is a similar case in the vulnerability of their breathing sacs. This is a rather fundamental organ of the mosquito, and expecting it to change very rapidly is unreasonable. This is not just some chemical resistance, but an inherent physical vulnerability. They may evolve thicker breathing sacs, but this is a flaw in the fundamental structure of the breathing sac and cannot be changed quickly. Thus, correcting this defect won't happen over a few generations.