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Fighting Mosquitoes With GM Mosquitoes
doug141 writes "Scientists are releasing genetically modified male mosquitoes that produce flightless female offspring. The male offspring go on to wipe out another generation of females. This is similar to the way screwworms were eradicated in the U.S., except with nature itself making more of the modified males. Field trials are already underway."
What could possibly go wrong?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Sorry to break up this anti-mosquito party, but don't mosquitos serve a useful purpose in nature?
Is it OK for us to blindly eradicate them just because they cause disease in humans? It's not like mosquitos are going to kill us off or anything.
Or maybe not. Actually I would be more in favor of releasing wave after wave of bats. Fruit bats preferably, they're cute!
You would think that some organization like the UN would step in and tell the US that genocide of an entire species is not a good thing.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
As far as I know, there aren't too many actual horror stories about GM animals messing up ecosystems.
However, there are hundreds of years worth of horror stories from introducing some species of animal or plant to help control another bothersome species. Plus many accidental, but no less problematic, introductions.
I'm not saying that GM as a species control is safe, but I am saying we've tried it that your way and it doesn't work well.
Much as humans hate them, mosquitoes constitute a potent food source to smaller vertebrates. Mammals represent massive concentrations of energy, and blood is a high energy substrate. Mosquitoes are a huge power source of fish, bats, etc. when they're caught still full of blood, and they're easy to catch.
I read in the one of the article links that the ecological impact isn't expected to be a serious problem, but I find that difficult to accept. And there are certainly detractors to that theory in the scientific community.
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks? They may be highly threatening to humans, but ultimately we still have to live here after the mosquitoes are gone...
So, for instance, we could create a way to selectively wipe out just the one species of mosquitoes that carry these diseases, while leaving other closely related species unharmed. Perhaps we could make it so that their females can't feed or flee from predators.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
"Folks, the mosquito could get extinct in a few years. Scary indeed."
Well, A mosquito species could be come extinct. According to TFA, Aedes aegypti to be exact. This particular mosquito can carry several major human pathogens including dengue hemorrhagic fever, yellow fever, and chickungunya, which are all viral diseases. Ae. aegypti originated in Africa but is now found throughout tropical and subtropical regions including the USA, where it used to be in only Florida and the southeast but has since spread north to New York and Illinois. Especially alarming is the fact that there have been outbreaks of dengue recently (in 2010 at least) in Florida.
Eradication of Ae. aegypti might not necessarily be that big of a deal environmentally. While mosquitoes are an important part of the diet of many predators, there are over 40 genera comprising thousands of species of mosquitoes. Any reasonably sized chunk of land probably has more than one species of mosquito, for example here in Wisconsin we have not less than 58 species. Even tiny Rhode Island is home to at least 46 mosquito species!
Hell, here in Louisiana, the mosquito is the fscking state bird....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The immediate side effect is that there will not be any mosquitoes.
No serious negative repercussions are known to exist for such an event beyond that the diet of certain types of insect predators would be affected (fortunately for such predators, their diet is not exclusively dependent on the species of mosquito that this concept intends to render extinct). The net effect upon mankind should be positive, other than possibly causing companies that make mosquito repellent to possibly go out of business.
But seriously.... did you *NEED* somebody to have to spell that all out for you? They're mosquitoes, for crying out loud... and not some vital part of the food chain on which we ourselves are part of.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We need a way to mod someone 'Actually read the article'
Result: Males will find it difficult to find a mate, resulting in fewer mosquitoes all together.
And then those mateless male mosquitos will either go into IT, become imaginary property lawyers, or become politicians.
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Will they be mango-flavoured?
Male mosquitoes feed on nectar from flowers, in the lab we feed them sugar water. Female mosquitoes on the other hand require a blood meal for the proper development of their eggs. Mosquitoes live in the water as free swimming larvae, which will develop into similarly free-swimming pupae. When development is complete, the pupae floats to the water surface and the adult mosquito emerges. The adult mosquito stands on the water surface while its new exoskeleton and wings dry and harden. The adult mosquito can't swim, and while it can walk on water it only does so when emerging from the pupae and for some species when depositing eggs. It minimizes water walking in both cases and flies away as soon as possible. That's what makes this so cool. The female, and only the female mosquito, is stuck on the water unable to fly and practically motionless. It's a free lunch to any mosquito-eating predator around. The males on the other hand are free to escape and then free to mate and pass that gene on to their offspring--again fatal to their daughters, and no harm to their sons, who repeat the cycle.