Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dragon flies love to eat them.
Humans love to eat wheat, but we wouldn't starve if all the wheat was gone.
Awe :( no more good bread
Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
71–80 of 285 posts
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#72Earlier 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…
This is an invasive species of mosquitos and this on one of many species. Scientist are not stupid and they are not gonna eradicate all mosquitos many non-harmful species will still thrive.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#73According to the WHO (http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria)
* Malaria killed 445,000 people in 2016.
* Of those, 285,000 were children under the age of 5.
* There were 216 million cases of malaria in 2016.
That is a large city's worth of children dying every year, and a large country's population having severely reduced productivity.
And that is just one mosquito born illness.
The guaranteed human and economic benefits of wiping out mosquitoes, far outweigh any theoretical downside.
This group and other groups working to wipe out mosquitoes are truly doing humanity a great service.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#74It 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…
Agreed. Ecosystems are a delicate balance. Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them? Especially species facilitating horizontal gene transfer. Pathogen vector may be only one of the functions of the mosquito. Perhaps by simply existing and occupying so much of a certain pathway they are keeping other pathogens at bay or preventing other viruses from evolving, perhaps down paths that, after the pressure of not having mosquito as a carrier, selects for more powerful pathogens that can thrive without mosquitoes. Sometimes having a tolerable evil we know is better than one we don't. Perhaps what we are really doing with ending mosquitoes is putting selective pressure on the pathogens formerly carried by them to find innovative, and possibly worse-for-us, ways to evolve and spread.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#75Earlier 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…
Trade-offs in ethics and effectiveness can be a subject of discussion, but it's hardly an "emotional outburst" to want to prevent swimmers from being eaten. Slippery-slope arguments seem to make sense when we're locked into one way of modeling the behavior of our fellow humans, but they're usually wrong anyway.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#76I 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.
The comment referred to fire ants specifically. These have become introduced to countries outside their homeland. For these regions While fire ants offer no purpose, create large economic costs and other issues including killing people.
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#77It 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…
This is why they're taking it slow; they're not worried about knock on issues with our herd immunity. They're worried about ecological collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
"The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 by Mao Zedong, as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: the mosquitos responsible for malaria; the rodents that spread the plague; the pervasive airborne flies; and the sparrows – specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow – which ate grain seed and fruit.[1]
[...]
By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng[2] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[8][9] Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased.[10][9] Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of the former upset the ecological balance, and bugs destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20–45 million people died of starvation.[11][12][Emphasis added]"
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#78I 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.
Strong suspicion every member of the ecosystem plays a role in sustaining the ecosystem.
Mosquitos are still the deadliest animal as far as humans are concerned, makes me wonder what other populations they are keeping under control....
Ecologist hubris and ignorance of 2nd and 3rd order effects is marching with misplaced confidence towards the death spiral.
*Buys more SpaceX bonds....
Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I'm all for wiping out the race of mosquitoes, I think it's arrogant on our behalf to assume that we can just remove a species completely from an ecosystem without consequences. If we're really lucky, the consequences will be minimal: spiders and other predators will simply find something else to eat. But if mosquitoes had some heretofore undiscovered critical purpose for the environment, we might have seriousl…
It's arrogant to assume that these species are "natural". Aedes aegypti did not exist at all in Fresno, for example, until 2013. These species of insects were introduced to these ecosystems. By humans. The diseases (for example, Zika) being spread now are the consequences of us introducing these mosquitoes in the first place. https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov…
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Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito
#80It 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…
Agreed. Ecosystems are a delicate balance. Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them? Especially species facilitating horizontal gene transfer. Pathogen vector may be only one of the functions of the mosquito. Perhaps by simply existing and occupying so much of a certain pathway they are keeping other pathogens at bay or preventing other viruses from evolving, perhaps down paths that, after the pr…
> Who knows what chaos will be unleashed by tampering with them?
It's a good question. And the same thing could be said about any disease prevention strategy. What if the persistent presence of Polio is necessary for us to survive some future hypothesised outbreak? Imagination is the limit here.
But we certainly do know the chaos that is unleashed everyday by not eradicating viruses that use mosquitoes as a vector.