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Should We Kill All The Mosquitoes? (bbc.com)
If scientists could send Zika-carrying mosquitoes into extinction, should they do it? Several science and business journals are now exploring the question, and Slashdot reader retroworks asks if scientists will ultimately target "not just the most deadly species of the animal, but all 12 species of human-biting mosquitoes in the world, responsible for 500,000 deaths per year."
The headline on today's [paywalled] Wall Street Journal article begs the question, "Why Not Kill Them All...?" [M]ore business journals are exploring private sector investments to eradicate the species of mosquito entirely, [and] most articles seem to find extinction of the indoors-attacking, dengue fever- and malaria-spreading Aedes aegypti a tantalizing prospect...
The BBC weighed the approach more carefully, noting that mosquitoes make rain forests uninhabitable (and consequences of human populations in rain forests are usually disastrous)... Will capitalism make the itch of mosquito bites be forgotten... Forever?
The BBC weighed the approach more carefully, noting that mosquitoes make rain forests uninhabitable (and consequences of human populations in rain forests are usually disastrous)... Will capitalism make the itch of mosquito bites be forgotten... Forever?
The little bastards like the taste of me, but I'd be wary of creating a vacancy that something worse might fill.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As annoying as mosquitos are, they also serve as a food source for other species. Might be a good idea to figure out where that thread leads before you pull it...
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Unfortunately, mosquitoes have no souls.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I would love not having them around, however be aware that mosquitos are a staple for bats. You have to think about the food chain first before you just go blindly killing all of them.
Let's kill the rich and all the corporations instead. The planet will thank us.
Agreed!
I come here for the love
Kill them all.
But lacking any humanity it does keep the population down.
Wealth does a lot more to keep the population down than mosquitos.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
How many lives do mosquitoes save by migrating virii and enabling human populations to develop immunities?
That's the question I'd ask before thinking about killing them all off.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
>"If scientists could send Zika-carrying mosquitoes into extinction, should they do it?"
Yes. In fact, any human biting mosquitoes, not just Zika ones. I personally would prefer the "eradicate to NEAR extinction" option and not complete eradication, however... just to be on the super-safe side. And, of course, we would retain frozen/live samples indefinitely. Perhaps eventually we could find a way to change them such that the females do NOT require blood to procreate.
The studies I have read seem to indicate that human-biting mosquitoes do not represent a critical or even major link in the food chain for other creatures. They are also very minor pollinators. Many believe their loss will not collapse or even stress any ecosystem.
I have no problems with the same treatment for fleas, ticks, chiggers, and bedbugs, either.... insects that cause nothing but misery and add little to nothing to the food chain.
useless one, like literally in Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (anopheles = an-ophelos = without use) so yes, we should.
What I thought they need to do is to genetically engineer another creature that has a food source other than animal blood that can serve as a food supply for the bigger animals.
start with lawyers and leave the poor mosquitoes alone.
I don't think we should be playing God and deciding who and what species deserve to be around. This seems like the beginning of a bad precedent. It is also extreme laziness. We know what causes and breeds mosquitoes. You should be working on a plan to eliminate the conditions that causes mosquitoes to breed in human population centers. More than that, mosquitoes are just convenient way for zika virus to get passed around. That doesn't mean there isn't any number of paths for pathogens to find their way to human hosts. Are we going to eliminate every species that can be a carrier?
Perhaps we should try to understand how zika was created. As always, our modern world will beget new species of viruses as a reaction to the things humans are doing. We are finding ways to fight viruses and they are mutating and finding ways to get back at us. It is quite probable that nature itself is trying to curb our own population growth in some manner. Right now, it isn't mosquitoes that is causing eco-logical disasters everywhere. We are
Bats also eat thousands and thousands of tons of insects that otherwise would wipe out our crops.
So then bats without any mosquitos to catch would simply catch more of the crop-destroying insects, right?
Bats are still around.
More crop pests are eaten.
Mosquitos are gone.
Sounds like a win/win/win.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not a question of if, but when. All it takes is one (or more) intrepid scientist(s) with jars of genetically modified mosquitoes, or one mistake by a lab tech somewhere. I think it might be something like the way killer bees were released into the wild and then spread.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
Killing off mosquito larvae would probably mean the end of most species of freshwater fish, the end of dragonflies and damselflies, and probably a lot more species that I don't know about as far as their eating habits go.
What TF has this got to do with capitalism? If it happens, it will be a huge regulatory intervention, done by governments and inter-governmental organizations. It will not be done for profit. That's like the exact opposite of capitalism.
I guess because it would be an intentional extinction in the era of modern conservationism.
that spraying is working out. Oh well, fuck the bees and their pollinating non-sense.
Eliminating pests sure worked well for the Chinese, didn't it? http://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112...
Here is a picture of somebody in China hand-pollinating a pear tree due to one of the unintended side effects (no bees): https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9wT...
Whatever happened to those laser mosquito zappers? They were coming real soon at least as far back as 2009. The inventors claimed it was easy to do with off the shelf components and aimed at $100 mass produced devices. There were all those cool slow motion videos of mosquitos shot down in flight. Nothing ever came of it... I'd happily pay $200 or more for a working system. There's a real need for such products, maybe a DIY version could be invented and people could build their own open source control systems for them. Malaria was bad enough, now with Zika all over the news I can't understand why these guys aren't swimming in cash.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
just this week news broke that several millions bees dies because of pesticides aimed at zika-bearing mosquitos. Imagine that on a global level, with unknown consequences to other species of animals
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
I have seen dramatic evidence that genetically modified fruit flies can wipe out populations and save millions worth of crops. This works on organic farms as well because no poison spray is required. These GM flies don't kill other species, only their own.
So, where are the modified mosquitoes?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Just as a point of reference, look up eradication of the screwworm fly. E.g., http://www.fao.org/docrep/U422...
Ironically HAVING wealth LITERALLY keeps the population down. It's mostly the poorest countries that have the highest population growth rates.
They can't be too ecologically important. Besides, we have plenty of lawyers and politicians to fill the bloodsucker vacancy.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
With the Singularity being postponed to 2045, this looks like the best chance for some worldwide disaster^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hexcitement before I die.
That is not begging the question.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If "dozens [of species are] going extinct every day" already, then what's a couple hundred more?
"Mosquitos are a prime food source for many different species"
Can you name any? Something where diet is composed at least 20% from mosquitos?
Misusing "begs the question" makes you look stupid.
This is begging the question:
"Do you still beat your wife?"
Get it? Got it? Good.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Mosquitoes are only a problem when its hot and humid.
You don't see them around in the winter.
and they would be less of a problem then anyway. If all your skin is covered up to protect you from the 40 below wind chill then they wouldn't be able to bite you anyway.
Perhaps we should catch and cultivate in captivity a genetically viable population of the species we intend to eradicate, before we wipe them out. Then if we eliminate them from the wild and that proves to be a bad move, we at least have the option of reversing course.
While it would seem to be nice to not have these insects making parts of the earth effectively uninhabitable, lets be a little cautious before removing something that has been part of the Earths ecology for the past billion years or so.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Mosquitoes are killing us. It would be stupid not to fight back. That's how natural selection works.
I love how people talk about natural selection as if we weren't part of it. If mosquitoes are a pest to the apex predator of the planet and it decides to eliminate them, it has lost at natural selection because it was unfit to survive in an environment where we live. Other insects that don't spread disease to the apex predator are more fit. Just because we reason and can launch space ships into orbit doesn't mean that we are somehow outside of the forces that natural selection acts with. We are one of its tools for determining survival regardless of what we think.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I read on the internet that most cases of rabies in the US are contracted from Bill O'Reilly bites.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There's an article making the rounds that suggests that these cases of microcephaly are due to the use of illegal pesticides and poor living conditions in Brazil. This is the first article I've turned up on the subject and the idea seems to have some merit.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/08/18/brazil-health-officials-suspect-zika-virus-is-not-responsible-for-the-rise-in-birth-defects/
We shouldn't vaccinate people either nor search for cures for cancer, since that will save us from overpopulation. (sic)
Sorry, I value a rainforest over a few humans.
We are interfering with Nature in all ways every day. Species are disappearing because some assholes want to cut some square miles of woods for small gain. I say, if we can, sure we should go full genocidal on the mosquitoes. Sure it will have unintended consequences, but if it has only a few of the intended ones, I'm IN.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Why? And in a related note, apparently only two mosquito species transmit Zika. Why?
I'm asking because that Nature link only seems to be considering consequences of the loss of the species as a food source. What about some of the other possible consequences? Could these human-biting mosquitoes be filling an ecological niche, and without them could biting flies (which hurt like hell) end up filling the now-empty niche and exploding in population? Could Zika mutate into a different form which allows it to be transmitted by other mosquitoes, or even flies?
You can't just consider whether the rest of the ecosystem could survive the loss of mosquitoes. You have to look at how it would react to the loss.
Eradicating an abundant species that is in the middle of a food chain tends to impact the food chain above it. Anything that feeds on mosquitoes or their larvae, as well as any animal that feeds on the animals that eat mosquitoes may be impacted. It will also depend on the specific ecosystem where the mosquitoes are being eliminated. Tropical forests with their diversity of insects will be less affected (although highly specialized species like Gambia fish will go the way of the Dodo bird without mosquitoes). Tundra ecosystems where mosquitoes are large chunk of the insect biomass will be hit harder. You can also have effects that are hard to anticipate. For example, caribou migration routes are effected by mosquitoes (caribous like us tend to avoid being attacked by large swarms of insects). This in turn affects where lichens are being eaten and where caribous fertilize the soil with their dung. It may sound as cliche, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and we have very compelling evidence that pathogens, including the ones spread by mosquitoes, affect the evolution of their hosts. On the other hand, what are the chances that wiping out couple of the hundreds of mosquito species will have a major long lasting impact? All the consequences and their impact are hard to predict, but easy to verify once they happen (at least the short term ones). The best approach would be to eliminate locally mosquitoes in various environments and measure the effect on the ecosystem. If nothing bad happens than let's scale up and eliminate more of them (yeah I know, humanity's ability to agree on long term systematic approach and execute it to completion is not one of its strengths). For a while we will not have to scratch ourselves, then some other bug will fill the niche (blood is too tasty and filling meal, to be left wandering around).
The primary argument for killing them seems to be that it would help protect humans. The primary argument against seems to be that there might be environmental consequences.
Consider if the situation were reversed. Imagine that mosquitoes were currently not killing any humans, but were in danger of going extinct, and there might be environmental consequences to that.
But wait! Fortunately, we have the ability to save the mosquitoes. All it would take is for some 500,000 people to be sacrificed each year! Now I know this may seem a bit unethical, but most of these people are in very poor countries, so the don't really count, right?
When you put it like that, the two sides don't seem so evenly balanced. It becomes pretty clear that our moral obligation is to exterminate the mosquitoes that spread disease to humans as soon as we can, using all the tools at our disposal.
Some people also bring up the possibility that wiping out mosquitoes will give an opportunity for something worse to appear. I don't think this is a good counter argument.
First, it is never used for any other species that poses a similar health risk. No one would ring their hands over the possibility that wiping out HIV would cause something worse to replace it.
Second, there really isn't a mechanism by which wiping out mosquitoes could present an opportunity for another species. Mosquitoes don't compete with other blood-drinking insects the way foxes and coyotes compete with each-other over rabbits.
Foxes and coyotes both have a certain rate at which they consume rabbits. The rate at which foxes consume rabbits plus the rate at which coyotes consume rabbits must be less than the replenishment rate of the rabbits, or over hunting occurs. As a result, a reduction in the number of coyotes means there can be more foxes.
But mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers don't compete like this. The total amount of harvest-able blood is not much reduced by mosquito activities. 500,000 people/year out of around 7,000,000,000 people = around 0.007% of the world population per year. True, this rate is much higher in high-mosquito regions, but even with very generous assumptions, it's unlikely to rise above 5%.
The upshot of all this is that wiping out mosquitoes won't suddenly cause a huge increase the amount of food available for any other species whose food source is similar to the mosquito's. As a result, any species that would be enabled by killing the mosquitoes should already have appeared, because the environment is just as favorable for them now as it would be if we were to kill the mosquitoes.
... and it overcame this by drying out swamps and improving healthcare. It can be done, if you fix your other social/economic problems, first.
So biting flies or some other species would bite people more because the mosquitos that bite people were killed off? How does that make sense from an evolutionary standpoint? The presence or non presence of mosquitos that bite people should not make a difference as to whether some other species evolves to attack humans or not. Just because a mosquito bites a person doesnt mean another species cant.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Or at least make them pay the damage they do? Only capitalists seem to be able to come up with such stupid ideas. Then it takes years to prove that it DOES harm, because any proof in a multifactorial context is very difficult to obtain. See e.g. the neonicotinoids, which have decimated the pollenizers and enriched criminal chemical labs for more that 2 decades until their lethal effects could not be contested any more.
Sincerely Yours,
Birds, Bats, and Spiders.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Seriously, Mosquitoes transfer virus between eurkayotes which transfers gene splices amongst us. THIS is our real basis for genetic variation. Lose that, and we bring evolution to a near stop. If we stop evolving, then it is over for our species, and possible all eurkayotes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I mean, kill the people bringing it into the USA. That means 'tourists' and other wastes of food. If you're young, white, liberal, and need your third-world cultural experience, go to a place without the zika epidemic.
Actually, that's just harsh, and unwarranted. It would be sufficient to quarantine all tourists from zika-infested areas until they are proven non-infected or no longer contagious. No need to be so harsh as to exterminate them.
We don't really understand the effect of mosquitoes on the overall biosphere. Is there something critical to us that relies, perhaps indirectly, on the little buggers? Quite possibly, but there is no one who knows enough to tell us. Better not to go with the nuclear option when we are in such a state of ignorance.
linquendum tondere
http://www.naturalnews.com/052...
http://articles.mercola.com/si...!
"For decades, Zika transmission was extremely rare. The virus didn't start spreading until after 2012 -- right after the biotech company Oxitec released genetically modified mosquitoes en masse in Brazil. Zika outbreaks quickly exploded from sites where genetically modified mosquitoes were released to combat dengue. Zika has now spread to 21 other countries and territories.
What's appalling is that Zika virus (ATCC VR-84) can be purchased from ATCC labs. It was deposited by Dr. Jordi Casals-Ariet of the Rockefeller Foundation and sourced from the blood of an experimental forest sentinel rhesus monkey from Uganda in 1947.
The question remains: Is Zika virus a bio-weapon, intentionally released via genetically modified mosquito? Perhaps it wasn't intentionally released but instead was an unintended consequence of releasing GM mosquitoes into the environment to eradicate dengue. Maybe this Zika strain is a resistant, mutant viral strain -- the evolution of a mosquito-borne virus caused by a biotech experiment gone bad?"
Those articles suggest that spraying pesticides and pushing vaccines on pregnant women may also have contributed to brain development issues in babies.
From the second article: "Children exposed to the aerial pesticide spraying were about 25 percent more likely to be diagnosed with autism or have a documented developmental delay than those living in areas that used other methods of pesticide application (such as manual spreading of granules). If authorities use the supposed threat of Zika to increase aerial spraying, it could increase children's risk of brain disorders, which is the opposite of what anti-Zika campaigns are supposed to achieve. ... ..."
It's possible Zika-carrying mosquitoes could be involved in suspected cases of microcephaly, but there are other factors that should be considered as well. For starters, the outbreak occurred in a largely poverty-stricken agricultural area of Brazil that uses large amounts of banned pesticides. Between these factors and the lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency, you already have the basic framework for an increase in poor health outcomes among newborn infants in that area. Environmental pollution and toxic pesticide exposure have been positively linked to a wide array of adverse health effects, including birth defects.
So, another reading of things is that previous expensive interventions (GM mosquitoes, vaccinations, pesticides) caused the problem that is now being used to justify more of the same expensive interventions with more profits to the same pushers... Meanwhile, the root cause of poverty, ignorance, poor nutrition are not being addressed.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
We should not after all, it is the state bird of Florida.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Having actually been to and lived in those high mosquito regions, I seriously doubt mosquitos are the reason we can't live in the Amazon. Yeah the bite rate is annoying. My guess is one pinprick per minute or even 30 seconds maybe at certain places/times.
I do recall holding my hand out once and within a minute a bunch of mosquitos landed. Interestingly none or few of them actually bit!
You can avoid mosquito bites by using a mosquito repellent in the home and also making sure it's sealed/meshed .. or sleeping under a mosquito net with is surprising effective.
Actually my biggest fear there was giant centipedes and snakes .. especially anacondas .. no thanks. The reason you can't live in the Amazon is because of centipedes and snakes.
Despite my venturing in South and Central America, my worst experience with mosquitos was camping in North Florida.
Anyway I don't like insects or reptiles, so when we leave Earth I hope we aren't taking them with us to Mars or wherever (Proxima B?).
We? WE? What have YOU done? Fuck nothing, I'm sure. I think you may have misunderstood my irony, but that's your problem.
But I guess that's why you are posting AC, because you are too much of a coward to say this and be accountable. Put your name behind your genocidal statements or go the fuck away.
Yes
All of your examples are introductions of species into ecosystems where they did not originate. I happened across one of these myself: in Australia, the beloved red opossum is critically endangered, so a breeding colony was established across the channel in New Zealand. They loved it there, took over, and were soon chomping up 20,000 kg of native forest every night. Now the Kiwis have to poison them into submission.
But what we're talking about here is eliminating two species out of many thousands of similar mosquitoes. There is no conceivable way the sky could fall if we do this.
Elephants don't fly, Stupid!!
Lol.
Just channeling my inner Trump. Sorry. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
So do the females. But there are many different species of mosquito, and only a few of them bite people. And, of course, bees are better pollinators if you don't kill them all off.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
My city drops larvicide down all the storm sewers three times a year in order to prevent West Nile Virus. (We've had no cases here and no positive tests in mosquitoes either this year.) So the bugs are gone and the job is done. But the flies are the worst they have been in at least 12 yeast (I can't say any further because I've only lived in this house for 12 years). The problem is that there are no predators in my suburb to eat flying insects anymore. Before the city started dropping the larvicide down the storm sewers there were plenty of swifts, purple martins, bats, and other flying animals that would eat insects. There was only parcel of land where some swifts managed to live until a last year when houses started being built on it. Now none of those animals exist in the suburb. The city could have encouraged more of those birds and bats to thrive here by giving away homes for them. It would have been cheaper in the long run instead of having to apply chemicals three times a year, every year.
Now we are seeing parts of the city where insect populations are getting out of control because there are no predators around. The city has to respond with chemicals because that's the only response left to them. The ecosystem is much more complex than what you think, even if you think it's complex. This plan isn't just taking out a particular insect. It has a purpose in the web or else it would exist.
The connection to pollinators alone is serious but we don't know how Gaia works, really. We don't know anything. Hubris will be our downfall. "So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? According to Phil Lounibos, an entomologist at Florida University, mosquito eradication "is fraught with undesirable side effects". He says mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further up and down the food chain." source: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
The biosphere is big. Really, really big. Sitting in your indoor room on your computer, chances are you have no awareness at all how mind-bogglingly big and complicated it is. Every footprint you leave in the dirt can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes after the next rain. Every crook where a branch meets a tree trunk. Every rain gutter, storm drain, abandoned swimming pool, and man made thing that can catch water during or after a rain. Every piece of vegetation that emerges from a swamp or body of water. Every body of water that isn't rapidly moving. This is ALL breeding ground to one kind of mosquito or another.
And a single female on one blood meal can pump out two to three hundred eggs in some species. And a couple weeks later she can do it again. For an entire year. And if the weather is warm enough those eggs will hatch, the larvae will go through five instars and pupate, emerging as a result in as little as two weeks -- although normally it takes twice as long. But in a hot wet summer, you can start with one gravid female and, well, do the math. Not all those eggs reach maturity, otherwise you'd be talking thousands of billions of descendants, but it is extremely easy to start with a handful of mosquitoes and within a couple of years have them spread across an entire contintent -- as happened when Aedes albopictus was introduces to the United States in 1985 in a shipment of tires. Fifteen years later it in a swath all the way from California to Maine, which is remarkable because it's a tropical species not particularly suited to the climates it was moving in. If you were talking about a species like Culex pipiens which is endemic to temperate climates it'd spread faster. Much, much faster.
So here's what happens in the very best imaginable case: you manage to wipe out most of the individuals of the targeted species in the world. But pockets remain, because the biosphere is huge and you just can't get to all the places they are. Your genetically modified mosquitoes (assuming that's what you're using) die out. The wild mosquitoes in the remaining pockets are now surrounded by vast swaths of unexploited habitat, which won't take long to expand into.
Mosquitoes are simply not eradicable. I don't care if you had something which worked ten times as well as DDT, cost one tenth as much, and was environmentally benign as distilled water. They cannot be eradicated. They can only be controlled until they're a tolerable nuisance. And if you want to keep them tolerable you must continue to control them. Forever.
It doesn't mean you can't do a really good job at controlling them, or that you can't eradicate them from certain relatively small but significant-to-us areas of the Earth. But they will come back.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
no corellation with birth defect, just fear mongering as usual.
But two things I wonder about are Mosquitos and ticks. Exactly what the flaming taint of Satan's purpose do they have in ecology? As far as I can see - none. A remote possibility of some strange DNA exchange, but that's just conjecture, based on a few stories I've heard from some scientists.
I would love to see an experiment to eliminate either or both form an area to see if there are any negative effects before a total eradication efort happens. Maybe we could add fleas to that list.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Seemingly unhinged about the whole Climate Debate and unrestrained with their attempts to form a NWO, these nut cases besides proposing changing the Earths CO2 cycles, now are releasing proteins into the Biosphere they have no clue what their affect will be.
NOW they also want to pick and shoose what species are going to survive seemingly content to watch whole Biospheres collapse as long as it means more tax money for their research.
This is going to end badly.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
No. That's not a given. Humanity has been in an all-out war of annihilation with insects for thousands, perhaps millions, of years - and we've never once managed to drive a single insect species to extinction.
Insects are a lot more resilient than most other kingdoms and while some have gone extinct in history - never yet by human hands, unlike almost every other kingdom on the planet. We've eradicated at least one virus. We've eradicated more animal species than we can count. Many species of fish. Quite a few moluscs and lots of reptiles (especially several species of giant tortous)... but no insect yet.
It's by no means assured that we could - especially one such as the mosquito family which is incredibly widespread across many continents with huge regions of relatively inaccessible habitat. We've, in the past, managed local eradications of specific mosquito species (Singapore for example used to be a Malaria zone) - but Anopheles lives on. At best we've reduced it's range a bit.
And that's just one species - mosquitos are a family of many. Zika is also not like Malaria. Malaria is a parasite that's only carried by one species of Mosquito - Zika a is a virus and potentially able to be carried by almost any of them (especially since virusses can adapt much faster than parasites).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And, for those who don't realize, that ten-thousand isn't just small stuff. It includes the largest living mammal. We didn't discover the Forrest Elephant until the 1950s and even then there was an ongoing debate about whether it's a different species or just African Elephants who live in a forest - in fact, those saying it's a different species were considered a heterodox minority and never got their view into any school textbooks.
We didn't actually prove it really *is* a different species (and now critically endangered - far moreso than African elephants due to their unique and smaller habitat which is rapidly being destroyed on top of usual poaching) until 1998 when DNA testing proved conclusively that forest elephants are not African elephants.
That's a third elephant species discovered so recently that most of ./ readers still went to school with textbooks saying there are only two species.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
there is a vast chasm between protecting it and actively eradicating parts of it without understanding the consequences. I hate mosquitos as much as the next person but nature is one area that our knowledge is sadly lacking, we haven't even come close to identifying all the species and interdependencies to an extent to which we can conclusively know of what affect such an irreversible action can have. Anyone that claims we know conclusively they know the effects is a liar or sadly ignorant of how much we don't know.
I think, on principle, we have eradicated enough species already without thinking, or thinking no further than our own, short term comfort. Like when we eradicate a top predator, because it occasionally takes a few of our cattle, and then we get overrun by billions of whatever used to be its main prey species - and they generally turn out to be a much, much bigger problem. We don't need to rush headlong into doing these things - we are clever animals, we can find better solutions than killing without thinking. We don't actually have much knowledge about whether these mosquitoes have an important role to play in their environment; a lot of mosquitoes are important pollinators, and just remember the ongoing furore about the honey bees.
No more Mexican Muslims?
I think before we make any sort of risky move eliminating mosquitoes I think we should be asking about what role they play with the human immune system.
Half a million deaths in the Human population is not a lot and I would be interested in the specifics of those people who did die before executing a species. A lot of people *don't* die from being bitten by a mosquito, after all. People's immune systems should be strong enough to tolerate the challenge of being bitten by a mosquito.
How do we know we are not compromising our species immune responses over time if we don't have something like a mosquito to challenge it?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Toxorhynchites larvae eat other mosquito larvae. Once out of larvae stage they eat nectars and saps.
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Says the western elitist who uses 30 times the amount of resources of the poor third worlder he wants to target for eugenics.
During the great plague that decimated Europe, someone had the brilliant idea that it was those evil-eyed cats causing the plague. There were cat bonfires until the cats themselves dwindled in number. Unfortunately it was the fleas indigenous to rats that were spreading the plague. Needless to say there was a rat population explosion. It did not work out well.
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I think you might have cause and effect switched around there.
I don't think so. People get wealthy, they start having fewer children because they are wealthy and their priorities change.
This isn't controversial.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
...we are obviously not smart enough to realize all the potential consequences of such a drastic action. It'd likely be more 'Future Shock' ramifications. We are just 'monkeys with a machine gun'!
Perhaps we should kill all the jihadists first.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.