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Australian Experiment Wipes Out Over 80% of Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes (cnn.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the buzz-off dept.

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.

25 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Works for people too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    A secret organization I cannot name is trying the same thing right now, in western countries we're releasing a bunch of liberal males into the populace - They just yell a lot and while not sterile, are so unpleasant they make breeding pretty much impossible so the result is the same - population crashing.

    It's working far better than we had hoped!

    1. Re:Works for people too by John+Da'+Baddest · · Score: 3, Funny

      I thought it was the other way around. Fox News replaces Fux News pornography, then suddenly all the new-Republican non-trophy wives can look up to Sarah Sanders for inspiration how to be servile.

    2. Re: Works for people too by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      People if you must use Word to type your comments then cut and paste. Please use the preview feature and actually fix the text. /. isn't smart enough to figure out what to do with "smart" quotes.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  2. Nature finds a way by TheMeuge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Nature finds a way by Wookie+Monster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Nature finds a way by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

      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!

    3. Re:Nature finds a way by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Funny

      completly... mosquito's are food and this just destroy's food

      The mosquito population seems to be doing just fine. Why look, there's two of them right there hovering over my screen, right now! Oh, wait, those aren't small bugs, those are erroneous, misplaced apostrophes. If only we could invent a bacteria that would kill off the use of the possessive form when people actually mean to use the plural form. It would make their, "Here, I'm informed and intelligent - let me tell you why you're wrong on this topic!" scolds feel a lot more credible.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    4. Re:Nature finds a way by cyn1c77 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Nature finds a way by Suki+I · · Score: 2

      So we are still not going to get the Silent Spring that we were promised 56 years ago?

      I feel so cheated.

      --
      Home of The Suki Series
    6. Re:Nature finds a way by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:Nature finds a way by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:Nature finds a way by isj · · Score: 2

      Angry Flower to the rescue: http://www.angryflower.com/bob...

    9. Re:Nature finds a way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    10. Re:Nature finds a way by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    11. Re:Nature finds a way by volodymyrbiryuk · · Score: 2

      Alex Jones will.

      --
      sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
    12. Re: Nature finds a way by bestweasel · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    13. Re:Nature finds a way by rkordmaa · · Score: 2

      Nonsense, there are no birds that would die out without one species of mosquito. And if they release similar amount of sterile males next year, the population will not be down further 60%, it will be all but wiped out. After that they can number down how many sterile males they need to release every year. However, it will take only few years for the population to bounce back if they ever stop the program and it only works in close vicinity to where they release the males. So for biotech companies this could become a very lucrative protection racket. There are ways to deal with the problem a bit more permanently, a fatal genetic defect can be engineered that is carried by males and only expressed in females.

    14. Re:Nature finds a way by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Females would have to know that the male is sterile and only select non-sterile males

      This isn't America. Healthcare is free in Australia. Just tell the males to get a sterility test and be done with it. It isn't cost prohibitive.

  3. Re:Disgusting and Abhorrent by blindseer · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  4. I'm offended by the mention of "wild females" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The term "wild females" is sexist and paints an unfavourable image of Australian women. I demand this study be thrown out, all paper copies destroyed, all backups erased and all the scientists who worked on it should lose their jobs. This is unacceptable behaviour in the #MeToo age.

  5. Re:Disgusting and Abhorrent by Gabest · · Score: 2

    Everything wants to kill you in Australia. It just wants to fit it.

  6. ... the other 20% ... by Rip!ey · · Score: 2

    Whilst it might be a promising contribution to global health (Hey, I'm an Australian), it's the other 20% we need to worry about. One step forwards, two steps back.

  7. No protests? by Provocateur · · Score: 2

    Hey how come we are not hearing any protests from animal rights people from Florida? This happens to be their state bird,you know.Just sayin

    --
    WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
  8. Method used since the 1950s by dtmos · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:First question that comes to mind... by thegarbz · · Score: 2

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

    They are non-native mosquitoes. This would be the equivalent of wiping out McDonalds from China. Life will go on.