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Australian Experiment Wipes Out Over 80% of Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes (cnn.com)
schwit1 quotes CNN: In an experiment with global implications, Australian scientists have successfully wiped out more than 80% of disease-carrying mosquitoes in trial locations across north Queensland.
The experiment, conducted by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and James Cook University (JCU), targeted Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread deadly diseases such as dengue fever and Zika. In JCU laboratories, researchers bred almost 20 million mosquitoes, infecting males with bacteria that made them sterile. Then, last summer, they released over three million of them in three towns on the Cassowary Coast.
The sterile male mosquitoes didn't bite or spread disease, but when they mated with wild females, the resulting eggs didn't hatch, and the population crashed.
The experiment, conducted by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and James Cook University (JCU), targeted Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread deadly diseases such as dengue fever and Zika. In JCU laboratories, researchers bred almost 20 million mosquitoes, infecting males with bacteria that made them sterile. Then, last summer, they released over three million of them in three towns on the Cassowary Coast.
The sterile male mosquitoes didn't bite or spread disease, but when they mated with wild females, the resulting eggs didn't hatch, and the population crashed.
Please note that this was only one species of mosquito, not them all. And I don't believe they make up much of birds' diet. That isn't to say that you are wrong about the idea that "nature finds a way", because it usually does. Although not always (which is why we end up with extinct species).
Personally, I selfishly would rather see mosquitoes (and fleas, ticks, bedbugs, stable/horse/deer/sand flies, lice, and all other such) wiped off the Earth completely, or at least converted into some non-parasitic versions (ones that don't bite and suck blood). Or at a minimum, some magic thing that would keep them at bay without dousing oneself repeatedly in barely effective and smelly chemicals. Hey, one can dream!
If you read the article (I know, this is Slashdot) then you'd know that this species of mosquito is invasive. It's native to Africa and wiping them out in Australia would bring the native ecosystem back. This isn't extinction, the species still exists in Africa.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So this year the population is down 80%, the next year it'll be down another 60%... but the following year 100% of the mosquito population will be immune, and there will be 10000% more of them because the bird population decreased 80% from starvation. To challenge nature on it's own terms is generally futile in the long run.
There are lots of other things for birds to eat. Also, bats eat many more mosquitoes than birds and there are many other insects for bats to eat.
Also, the mosquitoes they are eradicating were not a native species in Australia. So presumably the birds were fine eating native insects before this particular breed was introduced.
In most environments there are several to dozens of different species of mosquitoes (many of which don't bite humans) so removing one will mean that it is supplanted by other types. Also, there's very little concern over mosquitos having a knock-on effect up the food chain. When this was previously studied, researchers were far more concerned with bats (as most birds don't get much of their food from mosquitoes) and found that even among bats, mosquitoes only constituted a tiny part of their diet.
This type of solution is preferable to most other forms of mosquito control (okay it's not as cool as the laser) in that unlikely spraying insecticides, this approach only targets the specific type of mosquito that we want to eliminate whereas spraying kills all manner of different types of insects, including many that are of no harm to us. Using chemicals like DDT allowed us to eliminate malaria, but we realized that there were some high costs to that.
and there will be 10000% more of them because the bird population decreased 80% from starvation
Given that it's generally recognized that mosquitoes only make up a small single-digit percentage of the diets of certain birds (mainly purple martins) and bats, 80% might be a wee bit high.
1. Immune to what? Females would have to know that the male is sterile and only select non-sterile males, that is pretty hard task to do with just random mutation during a couple of generations. And even if they do figure out a way, all would just reset back to where it started. And there is no reason why scientists couldn't come up with a counter measure to that. But in other similar experiments they have not seen any immunity.
2. You are making up numbers. Birds will do fine without that food source. Actual scientists that actually study birds have confirmed that, because this arguments comes up every time.
3. To challenge nature is futile? You are talking to a species that has already wiped out hundreds of other species.
Crichton was an author, not a biologist.
Wikipedia:
[H]e obtained his bachelor's degree in biological anthropology summa cum laude in 1964... He received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship from 1964 to 1965 and was a visiting lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965.
He graduated from Harvard, obtaining an MD in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970.
The sterile insect technique has been used since the 1950s. In Florida, in my living memory, it eliminated the dreadful screwworm (the males were sterilized by X-radiation), and even stopped a re-infestation in the Florida Keys in 2016.
There is nothing new about this technique, except perhaps the method by which the males were made sterile. If you're concerned about ecological implications, the technique has a 60-year history covering many insects around the world for you to study.
Before you dismiss the technique out of hand, however, I suggest that you spend time with patients (quite literally) suffering from Dengue, with mothers having given birth to babies with Microcephaly due to Zika, or those owning dogs, cats, or farm animals agonizing from screwworm infections, and get their viewpoint.