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

[markdavis]

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!

Re:Nature finds a way

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:Nature finds a way

[cyn1c77]

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.

Re:Nature finds a way

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Nature finds a way

[SlaveToTheGrind]

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.

Re:Nature finds a way

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

I'm offended by the mention of "wild females"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Method used since the 1950s

[dtmos]

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.