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Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

csiro.au

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Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#81

Post by kd5bjo »

delecti wrote: post #67
thaumasiotes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They didn't do anything to the existing mosquitos. They released sterile specimens. All of the fertile wild specimens were still going about their business making more Mosquitos, but the matings between the normal wild ones and the sterile lab ones didn't result in offspring. 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 6…

No, but dice that roll sixes more often are contributing more offspring to the next generation. If the selection pressure keeps up, you will have most dice consistently rolling 6s.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#82

Post by billions »

dosy wrote: post #74
billions wrote: post #50

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…

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…

What if some helpful antibodies are transmitted via mosquitos? What if this happens cross-species?

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#83

Post by IllogicalLogic »

iknowstuff wrote: post #38
panarky wrote: post #36

The 20% that survived are immune to this and will now multiply unchecked.

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…

Problem with nature, it does "unlikely" at a frequency we chronically underestimate.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#84

Post by delecti »

kd5bjo wrote: post #81
delecti wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't do anything to the existing mosquitos. They released sterile specimens. All of the fertile wild specimens were still going about their business making more Mosquitos, but the matings between the normal wild ones and the sterile lab ones didn't result in offspring. 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 6…

No, but dice that roll sixes more often are contributing more offspring to the next generation. If the selection pressure keeps up, you will have most dice consistently rolling 6s.

There's no reason to think there's any difference between the wild mosquitos who bred with fertile wild specimens and the wild mosquitos that bred with sterile lab specimens. If there's no difference, then there's no "selection" going on.

If you want to argue that there is a difference, then you'll have to provide some evidence of that. Currently you're asserting it as a premise.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#85

Post by superflyguy »

avip wrote: post #63
billions wrote: post #50

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…

There are always complex consequences, but note that Aedes aegypti is human-introduced in Australia to start with. It's an intrusive species, it may be safe to eradicate.

Judging by the name it'll be safe to wipe them out everywhere except Egypt then?

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#86

Post by IllogicalLogic »

cbhl wrote: post #37
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

That mosquito species probably spent more time in Cali than humans have spent on this planet... Let's be a bit more open/honest about the bigger (4 billion year) picture here.

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#87

Post by muxator »

IllogicalLogic wrote: post #78
scythe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

> Buys more SpaceX bonds.

Write me when the Martian ecosystem will have reached equilibrium between mega-worms and killer super-bacteria imported from Earth :)

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#88

Post by HillaryBriss »

retbull wrote: post #71
thaumasiotes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans love to eat wheat, but we wouldn't starve if all the wheat was gone.

Awe :( no more good bread

someone would no doubt start a company called Beyond Bread to make artificial bread from beef

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#89

Post by gascan »

scythe wrote: post #45
beauzero wrote: post #27

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.

According to whom? That now-famous intern from 8 years ago?

Re: Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

#90

Post by BillinghamJ »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #73

According 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 h…

> The guaranteed human and economic benefits of wiping out mosquitoes, far outweigh any theoretical downside.

I don’t see how you can be so certain. We know that time and time again, the human race has thought this to be the case and ended up with serious resulting issues.

That’s not to say that the potential issues would be worse than 500k people per year, but I don’t see how we can say that with any real certainty.

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