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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.
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.
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.