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."

Comments

Call the Gates! (fp?)

[PateraSilk]

This can't be first post! Well, I'll be! Anyway, this is really quite interesting. Maybe someone should contact the Gates Foundation to see if this could help eradicate malaria in 3rd World nations. It looks like a pretty damn cheap solution.

All graphics!

[DrSkwid]

the guy might be clever but he needs a lessson in how to get one's site indexed

I guess a /.'ing is one way to spread the word but some lifeforms need the blood of the search engine to survive.

Breeding Resistance

[justanyone]

Hey:

I'm wondering if this would just breed resistance to having body parts susceptible to sonic disruption. After all, mosquitoes breed in incredibly large numbers, so in very few generations, resistance to this should develop.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of "Better Living Thru No Chemicals" (tm) (grin) but I just see this thing as flawed in its longevity given the natural forces at work.

How much does ultrasonic propogate through water? These larvae are in water, right? So, the larvae that are on the surface are killed (which is most of them if memory serves about how their life cycle works). But, what about the ones slightly below the surface? And even farther? They get less of a sonic dose, and are bred for resistance.

This is the same kind of thing that's being done with lysteria and myriad other diseases/organisms by administering antibiotics in small doses to cattle / other livestock. We're breeding for better organisms that will evade our better efforts.

Good job, though, and hearty thanks to the 15 year old.

I might suggest people build more bat houses, though. Bats are known to eat half their weight in insects, mostly skeeters, per NIGHT. Note: I think skeeters must be high fiber (grin) or this would be really filling (!!!).

I have a bat house; we just moved, and I'm going to reinstall it at our new house. They're like birdhouses, but specific to bats (whose natural habitat, rotting trees and caves, are very scarce in suburbia). Contrary to popular opinion, bats don't carry disease readily because they're rather fragile creatures, they just die and people find them, think they're the disease carriers instead of the victims. Bats are actually very, very useful, and really harmless creatures. Give them a home, I say, and get rid of the skeeters that way.

Evolutionary pressures have been balancing out this predator / prey for a long time.

Re:Breeding Resistance

[Paradise Pete]

but how would the cell evolve to stop a soundwave ?

By changing the resonant frequency. The more effective 24KHz is (the frequency mentioned in the article) the faster the evolution would happen, as only those larvae that resonate at a different frequency would survive. Over time, in places where this device was heavily used, you'd get a range of possible frequencies in the larvae.

Regarding your sig (semi-OT)

[Tau Zero]

One of the projected effects of global warming is to increase the variability of weather. This means a greater probability of cold snaps in winter, as well as heat waves in summer, cycles such as El Nino driven harder, in addition to generally hotter conditions averaged over the earth.

Warm-water corals are moving northward along the Atlantic coast of Florida, and (getting slightly back on-topic) it appears likely that malarial mosquitoes will be able to move north right along with them. Move over, West Nile; the really BIG killers are coming to major population centers near you!

Re:Great Idea! Let's go for it!

[lcde]

Just as a side note.... won't this eraticate the dragon fly population. Their larvae eat mosquito larvae...

How loud???

[Muad'Dave]

Somebody check my math - the storm drain model claims an output of 195 dB referenced to 1 mPa @ 1m. If I did the math right, [using the power formula dB = 10*log(P1/Pref)] that comes out to 31.6 pPa (yes, 31.6 peta Pascals) @ 1m. That's about 313 billion atmospheres! Even using the more conservative 'voltage' formula [dB = 20*log(V1/Vref)] it still only comes out to half the above value. I would expect instant boiling at those amplitudes.

Natural Selection

[Tyreth]

note: I'm not a neo-Darwinist, or what is generaly known as an evolutionist.

In this situation we may find that the mosquito gene pool may be diverse enough to contain a small number of mosquito larvae that are not destroyed by these devices (taking into account that other insects are unaffected, this may mean that the margin of error is small). Thus the gene pool will be reduced in eliminating most types of mosquito's except those that can survive. Just as we see most bacteria killed by anti-biotics, but a few immune ones surviving.

Just thought that would be an interesting side note. I don't know how easy these devices would be to tune them to destroy 'new' types of mosquitos.