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Google's Life Sciences Unit Is Releasing 20 Million Bacteria-Infected Mosquitoes in Fresno (techcrunch.com)
Earlier this week, a white Mercedes Sprinter van began a delivery route along the streets of Fancher Creek, a residential neighborhood on the southeastern edge of Fresno, California. Its cargo? 100,000 live mosquitoes, all male, all incapable of producing offspring. As it crisscrossed Fancher Creek's 200 acres, it released its payload, piping out swarms of sterile Aedes aegypti into the air. It'll do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, from now until the end of December. From a report: Verily, the life science's arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, has hatched a plan to release about 20 million lab-made, bacteria-infected mosquitoes upon Fresno, California -- and that's a good thing! You see, the Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito is prevalent in the area. Earlier this year, a woman contracted the first confirmed case of Zika in Fresno through sexual contact with a partner who had been traveling. Now there's the fear of the inevitable mosquito-meets-patient if we don't do something about it. Verily's plan, called the Debug Project, hopes to now wipe out this potential Zika-carrying mosquito population to prevent further infections.
On the one hand, I think that mosquitos should be intentionally driven to extinction. At least the disease baring ones. My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
On the other hand, I find unregulated ecological engineering by a private company to be quite creepy.
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Summary is missing the important bit.
Verily’s male mosquitoes were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans, but when they mate with and infect their female counterparts, it makes their eggs unable to produce offspring.
Better known as 318230.
My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
Google is your friend. I knew the answer to this already, but was surprised by how readily available source material was to support my response.
A few notable items:
http://www.nature.com/news/201...
http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if...
http://science.howstuffworks.c...
https://www.theguardian.com/gl...
Etc.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
...the TSA does in their spare time?
Although they have adapted it to this specific species of mosquito, what Google/Verily is doing is not a new. It's been done since the 1940's, and has had many successes in eradicating or suppressing pest populations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mosquitoes being eliminated everywhere would have no negative effect on the ecosystems. Mosquitoes aren't a significant food source for any animals and well they are just blood sucking disease carriers.
From TFA:
Could messing with the mosquito population have some unforeseen disastrous consequences? Not likely. This particular mosquito species entered the area in 2013.
This is very important information, I think. We're just dealing with another invasive species here. Nothing will be harmed by wiping out this local population. It can't possibly be a critical link in the local ecosystem over such a short period of time.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I think it's pretty well established that life tends to gravitate toward that which will propagate life.
I think we collective don't really stand much of a chance against nature's natural selection.
In the short term, this may reduce mosquitoes, but long term? Probably not. It won't take long for nature to teach the female mosquito to avoid males that don't procreate properly. But this is one case where I hope I'm wrong. I hate those things!
Possibly, but also possibly not.
The US South used to be subject to screw worm fly, a parasite that lays eggs in open sores of livestock and humans. It's been eradicated using the strategy in the OP - many irradiated male screw worms were released into the wild, who would mate with the females, but the eggs would not hatch.
Each time the male flies are released, the probability of successful mating goes down a little. Keep releasing the flies over time, and the probabilities become progressively less and less.
Mathematically speaking the reproductive probabilities never reach zero, but you reach a point where the discrete nature of the insects comes into play. When the last female in an area dies, there is no recovery.
Screw worms have been eliminated from the US for several decades using this method, and the technique has been generally proven as safe. In the irradiation method, you're not releasing anything into the environment that wasn't already there.
Aedes aegypti is becoming resistant to insecticides, and carries the Zika virus.
If you can make the population crash to zero it won't recover, short of reintroducing it.
I'm looking forward to the time when we can start eradicating some of these pests from the world, such as the Anopheles mosquito in the US (which is not native), mongooses in Hawaii, or cane toads in Australia.
portion of the native population currently filling that niche.
Something people often forget about invasive species: If they displace enough of the native flora/fauna in the ecosystem, then removing them could in fact lead to a crash of the native population when the predating species decimate the native population as a result of the loss of the displacing species as a food source and the overabundance of the predator species.
The result of which might be the loss of the invasive species, the invaded species, and any higher species in the foodchain which rely on it as/to feed higher food chain animals.
On the one hand, I think that mosquitos should be intentionally driven to extinction. At least the disease baring ones. My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
On the other hand, I find unregulated ecological engineering by a private company to be quite creepy.
Don't be.
They're not eradicating *all* mosquitoes, and no one is suggesting that we eventually do that.
Aedes aegypti are not native to the area, and first appeared in 2013. Anopheles, the ones that bite humans, are not native to North America.
There are a couple of hundred species of mosquito and we're only targeting the ones that cause us harm, and the ones that are not native.
The other species will re-expand to fill the empty niches.
While this batch of bacterially infected mosquitos will (hopefully) induce a short term (months? years?) drop in the population, a "technical" fix for permanently solving this problem worldwide now exists.
It is called "Gene Drive" if you haven't heard of it and what it utilizes is the powerful genetic editing technique called CRISPR. Basically you alter the genes of a male mosquitos so it carries the CRISPR gene package so that all of its children are male. Then, the included CRISPR package in the genome alters all of THEIR genes so that all of their children are male (and carries the package forward).
The population because more and more male "dominated" until there are no females left. Then poof!, after one last generation, they're gone.
While the deliberate (we're doing it all the time accidentally) elimination of a species is obviously something that shouldn't be done lightly, since THIS particular species carries Malaria, Dengue Fever, West Nile virus and Zika it would seem to b a prime target. Bill Gates, after his foundation spent several hundred million dollars trying to eradicate Malaria says he's all for it because he thinks it may be the only way to wipe out some of these terrible scourges (millions of dead children). It appears as if New Zealand will try this technique to get rid of an invasive species, a mammal(!) introduced by European settlers; the mouse. (If successful they plan to continue doing this to many other invasive species).
https://www.technologyreview.c...
Of course it would be the height of irony if a mosquito managed to transfer the CRISPR gene package (from itself or a mouse) to its main host, thus getting rid of the most invasive species in Earth's history: US
Because it has already been quite well demonstrated that these methods, while they sound convincing, dont actually work.
Why? good old natural selection.
The few females that can resist the Wolbachia bacteria (the infection being carried that is effective) will be the ones that breed.
And quite likely they will produce more resistant females, and males.
Very soon, the population is back, and now resistant to that vector.
Already well demonstrated in trials, but the modern way is not to research, its just to do, and assume you know best.
live mosquitoes, all male, all incapable of producing offspring.
The kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.
You're confusing "life" with "a species". Species die out all the time.
Also, you do realize you're quoting a movie as fact, right?
My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
Google is your friend. I knew the answer to this already, but was surprised by how readily available source material was to support my response.
A few notable items:
http://www.nature.com/news/201... http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if... http://science.howstuffworks.c... https://www.theguardian.com/gl...
Etc.
You were surprised? Yeah, I was too, particularly as to the data you provided, since I believe the point you were trying to make is mosquitoes are necessary and vital to our ecosystem.
Some of your articles hint that eradication would not create an ecological impact. Some also stated that eradication efforts are "not worth it unless there was a very serious public health emergency."
Perhaps the true question is how many humans will have to become infected or die until the latter statement rings true?
Perhaps we look at history to answer that. The mosquito has long been known as the deadliest animal on the planet. They have killed countless humans through the ages. It carries over a dozen diseases, including malaria, which still kills over a million people every year. Now Zika has been added to that infamous list.
Sad when you consider the innocent victims of Zika are babies suffering from microcephaly. The fear of that affliction alone is a form of terrorism when it comes to people wanting to start a family. Imagine the other impacts of areas known to be Zika-prone. Think your home value would not plummet if they found a 300% increase of Zika cases in your zip code? Impact local business that rely on humans being outside but now aren't due to increased fear of infection? I'm willing to bet it would. Much like the global concerns surrounding the Ebola outbreaks a few years ago, humans can get rather panicky when it comes to increased chances of being exposed to a life-threatening disease. Perhaps rightly so.
It would appear that we are doing something now to counter the threat, likely because enough revenue is at risk. Efforts have to be financially justified when it comes to preventing harm or death these days. If we do nothing in response to increased risk, then the mosquito will simply stand as yet another form of population control.
There is no animal (including bats) which depends on mosquitoes for its primary food source. Some bat populations might decline somewhat, but if there are no mosquitoes then it's okay if that happens. I think it would be worth the trade-off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"