61–70 of 285 posts
I have one question...can we do this with fire ants?
Ants actually serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes are unique in that many ecologists believe mosquito eradication would not adversely affect other species.
I’m not a zealot on the subject but I do believe some form of equally-distributed sterilization is the only way the human race can be saved from itself. That’s a very hard conversation I’d like to see broached.
It is theorized there is no adverse effect from killing mosquito species. There is always a counter-effect. Typically it's unpredictable. Mosquitoes FACILITATE transmission of bad stuff. I believe that if bad stuff is not transmitted, species evolve more slowly against pathogens. Species will still be exposed, maybe generations later through a scratch or otherwise. At that point, having never evolved a strong immune…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'environment' is often in balance. Any abrupt change can cause oscillations and crashes. May as well ask "By not removing this brick from the wall, I may be screwing the wall up!"
The 'environment' is really never in balance. Predator/prey oscillations and crashes are the norm even without humans around. Maybe some ecosystems have been around long enough to have some properties of complex adaptive systems where the parts interact to keep extreme oscillations from occurring, but knowing how an ecosystem will respond to a single species disappearing is really unknowable until it happens.
And it sure isn't unknowable - find what is interacting with that mosquito (something may be eating its larvae or reproducing symbiotically or parasitically etc). That dependent creature will be catastrophically affected, likely become extinct as well.
It is theorized there is no adverse effect from killing mosquito species. There is always a counter-effect. Typically it's unpredictable. Mosquitoes FACILITATE transmission of bad stuff. I believe that if bad stuff is not transmitted, species evolve more slowly against pathogens. Species will still be exposed, maybe generations later through a scratch or otherwise. At that point, having never evolved a strong immune…
It is theorized there is no adverse effect from killing mosquito species. There is always a counter-effect. Typically it's unpredictable. Mosquitoes FACILITATE transmission of bad stuff. I believe that if bad stuff is not transmitted, species evolve more slowly against pathogens. Species will still be exposed, maybe generations later through a scratch or otherwise. At that point, having never evolved a strong immune…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a virus. Rather than being immune, they might have managed to avoid mating with the altered mosquitos (by chance apparently, as there seems to be no perceptible difference) - for now. Antiretrovirals fight HIV by blocking its multiplication in multiple ways, such that the virus would have to mutate in a few particular ways simultaneously to survive, which is extremely unlikely. Perhaps the mosquitos could be…
What happens by chance in the first generation will happen by design in later generations. Unless the altered mosquitoes differ from normal ones in a new and unpredictable way every generation from now to the end of time, they will eventually be detected and avoided.
If you roll a collection of dice, and remove all of them when they roll something other than 6, the other dice haven't "evolved" to only roll 6s.
I’m not a zealot on the subject but I do believe some form of equally-distributed sterilization is the only way the human race can be saved from itself. That’s a very hard conversation I’d like to see broached.
It's not just a hard conversation, it is an impossible conversation. The only viable avenue is education and even then life is very much geared to beget more of it. And that's before we get into life extension. The better alternative is to get off the planet. The only reason we are exhausting the planet is because there is more of us every day and the same amount of planet to be divided. Or there might be some man ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, pretty sure: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
> "Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms." More concerning than the ecological scar left behind by the eradication of some species of mosquito is the precedent that would be set. Once you've deliberately eradicated one pest species, people will incorporate the knowledge of that action into their image…
Even with reuse it is pretty mating strategy dependent. It isn't a dial an extinction. Trying that with say feral cats would be a miserable failure or at best the equivalent of releasing a bunch of teaser tomcats into an area having only the TNR occupying effect on inhibiting population growth by claiming territory until they die of natural causes.
I’m not a zealot on the subject but I do believe some form of equally-distributed sterilization is the only way the human race can be saved from itself. That’s a very hard conversation I’d like to see broached.
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/birthrates-are-declin...