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Sex-Switched Mosquitoes May Help In Fight Against Diseases
cstacy writes: Only the female mosquitoes bite and transmit viral diseases such as Dengue Fever. Scientists have finally discovered the elusive genetic switch called Nix, that determines the sex of these blood sucking insects, and hope to selectively eliminate females to control the spread of diseases. "Nix provides us with exciting opportunities to harness mosquito sex in the fight against infectious diseases because maleness is the ultimate disease-refractory trait," explained Zhijian Jake Tu, an affiliate of the Fralin Life Science Institute and a biochemistry professor from Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
While I agree with the conclusion, I do beleive you arrived at it a bit incorrectly. It's that mosquitoes don't fill any useful ecological niche. Their sole purpose in the environment is to make things suffer, and they don't have any positive contributions which even come close to evening that out. This is a rare thing that should enable us to slaughter them in massive quantities to the point of extinction without any noticeable effect on the environment except that more people will be willing to go on nature walks.
"Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. The answer is yes."
No. The pressure on deer is different when the wolves are exterminated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The deer population saw a higher equilibrium, because the human pressures were different. Wolves did a good job of iproving the deer breeding stock. Sick and weak are selectively targeted, when human hunters will deliberately not choose the sick and weak.
So yes, there are differences, and sometimes they end up larger changes that people assume. Wolves move rivers. The bears and humans and such that filled the niche didn't have the same effect.
But mosquitos have no benefits. Kill them all, and I'll not get bit again. And we'll stop malaria and other diseases.
Learn to love Alaska
There's a huge number of small fish that love eating mosquito larvae, with a large number of fish (and birds, frogs, snakes, etc) that eat those small fish, etc, and even larger animals that eat those fish...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai