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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.
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.
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.