And all it took is a $1M grant ?
Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
31–40 of 86 posts
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#32http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html Makes a good case for why eradicating mosquitoes will not be problematic. But every time there is a large scale intervention like this the side effects only become apparent decades after the fact. You mess with ecosystems at this scale at your peril. Even if we can't see any downside to this today that doesn't mean there isn't a downside. DDT looked pretty good…
I think the major difference between this attempt at species destruction and other previous attempts is the massive amount of human disease and death already perpetrated by the clumsy little biters. It comes down to determining whats better: not messing with the environment and continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of human deaths a year. or trying to kill off mosquitoes. Wikipedia claims that malaria alone cause…
whats better: not messing with the environment and continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of human deaths a year.
One could argue that in the light of human overpopulation it might not be wise to remove one of our last natural predators.
A cynical stance, for sure, and it gets only more cynical when you consider that we might be trading mosquito-deaths for starvation-deaths here...
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#33http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html Makes a good case for why eradicating mosquitoes will not be problematic. But every time there is a large scale intervention like this the side effects only become apparent decades after the fact. You mess with ecosystems at this scale at your peril. Even if we can't see any downside to this today that doesn't mean there isn't a downside. DDT looked pretty good…
There seems to be an assumption here that ecosystems are friendly places but they really aren't. Nature does not know best. The vast majority all species in history have been wiped out by their natural environments, many by their own genes.
All actions that we take to try to fix problems go on to create new problems. It's expected.
And, of course, this doesn't mean we shouldn't act, unless we have a good explanation now as to why the harm of a proposed course of action outweighs the benefits.
The alternative is to follow some kind of 'Precautionary Principle', which, as David Deutsch has pointed out, can only damage our ability to handle threats which we do not foresee.
Meanwhile, people's lives are in known peril from malaria.
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#34> And that, according to scientists from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is an Achilles’ heel — or Achilles’ proboscis — through which the pests can also be poisoned. This thread presents a great opportunity to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict. Who wants to start?
Wrong forum.
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#35That's pretty neat. I use boric acid for restoring rotted wood in my old 1800's house. It's been well known for a long time to stop insects. You can actually buy rods of the stuff to insert into rotting (or in danger of rotting) wooden beams (such as a beam in the foundation of an old house that gets too wet). When the wood gets wet the beam spreads and stops any further mold rot or insects (roaches, ants) from harmi…
Borax will also annihilate flea problems :)
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
How so? Asking seriously -- I just started reading a bio of Franklin, and I'm hungry for details.
The argument probably goes something like this: 1. Ben Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the national bird/symbol, not the bald eagle. 2. DDT is particularly devastating to bald eagles (due to transmission through fish which concentrate the DDT and makes the shells of bird eggs too thin to properly allow full term hatching (bald eagles really like fish)). 3. Since the bald eagle is the national symbol of the US t…
Just about nailed it.
Of course I'm mostly joking, but I hate birds and recently got a bunch of bug bites....
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the problematic side, the cheap boric acid solution (pun!) will likely be the most used. And this will be bad. 1) Boric acid will kill any insect that ingests it. 2) If you leave rotting fruit out, every nectar lover will drink it. From experience, this will be at least 50% honeybees. So yeah, it will crash native honeybee populations too. If you are curious and want to see how effective it would be, mix up some b…
Honeybees are much larger than mosquitoes. Could you simply screen the honeybees out?
That's so low tech, it's genius.
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
They used different toxins in different tests, a modern bacterial toxin targeting mosquitos, and then simply boric acid, about which they say: … and it kills in so many ways that there’s never been resistance to it. Some authorities think there never will be. Maybe it will select for mosquitos that will avoid the fake nectar, but that can be rotated and the mosquitos need to feed on nectar. They inadvertently tested…
That's true. I think they'll much faster start smelling and becoming repulsed by boric acid, however, than they will start avoiding fake nectar. Which is practically the same as being resistant.
So we'll have created an effective insect repellant. Awesome.
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#39> And that, according to scientists from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is an Achilles’ heel — or Achilles’ proboscis — through which the pests can also be poisoned. This thread presents a great opportunity to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict. Who wants to start?
Wrong forum.
Yeah, you're new here, aren't you? Just today there was a thread about the Dead Sea scrolls being put online thanks to the Israel museum. One of the prominent comments there is about how Israel "stole" the scrolls. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3041572
Re: Toxic Nectar Kills 90% of Mosquito Populations
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the major difference between this attempt at species destruction and other previous attempts is the massive amount of human disease and death already perpetrated by the clumsy little biters. It comes down to determining whats better: not messing with the environment and continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of human deaths a year. or trying to kill off mosquitoes. Wikipedia claims that malaria alone cause…
whats better: not messing with the environment and continuing to allow hundreds of thousands of human deaths a year. One could argue that in the light of human overpopulation it might not be wise to remove one of our last natural predators. A cynical stance, for sure, and it gets only more cynical when you consider that we might be trading mosquito-deaths for starvation-deaths here...
I would call it a parasite, not a predator.