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.

Comments

Nature finds a way

[TheMeuge]

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.

Re:Nature finds a way

[Wookie Monster]

How did you arrive at the 80% decrease in bird population? Do you have some data that shows that the birds living in this area depend exclusively on a diet of mosquitos? If this is the case, then it would seem that the population of the other mosquitos will go down as well. Keep in mind that an 80% reduction of disease caring mosquitos doesn't imply an 80% decrease in all mosquitos.

Re:Nature finds a way

[ChromeAeonuim]

Not every mosquito is native to every area, and not every insect is a major and irreplaceable part of the food system.

Humans have messed up every ecosystem on the planet, eliminated more species than we even keep track of, but try to eradicate one pest, even one which is an introduced vector of disease even to the native animals in some places, and suddenly you've gone too far? Baloney. If ecosystems were so fragile they could't handle the loss of one more exceptionally problematic pest, they would have collapsed a long time ago.

And that 'nature will find a way' crap? Tell that to the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, the moa, the quagga, steller's sea cow, or plenty of other less famous organisms. Tell that to the Hawaiian honeycreepers, which are currently being wiped out by avian malaria, spread by human introduced mosquitoes. Maybe tell that to the baiji or the totoaba, they could use the encouragement.

First question that comes to mind...

[plazman30]

What eats the mosquitoes? Because whatever it is, you just wiped out a major food source for them.