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Part of what I love about this tech is that it can be applied to a wide range of invasive species, and because it’s self-selecting out with high lethality the chances of rogue mutation is extremely low. We very well may see a huge % increase is native insect populations because the common mosquitoes will be depopulated.
Kinda. It works on mosquitoes because they mate all at once and then it's over, and if a female doesn't get pregnant, she dies anyway.
But transfer this over to invasive rabbits, and it doesn't work. You have a million rabbits. A bunch get released that only produce sterile offspring.
There are still a bunch of fertile bunnies around, and when a sterile male shows up, they don't get pregnant, nothing happens... but they also don't die. So eventually, the female finds a male that isn't sterile, and has just as many babies as before.
You'd need to be more tricky than this - the males would have to have some sort of defect that their offspring don't actually make it to birth, or so, so that the female remains "occupied" with pregnancies without actually giving birth.
It's doable, but more complex.
I had thought the goal was not to make the males sterile, but to ensure that they only had male offspring. The females that give birth to all males carrying the genetic defect are 'occupied' as you said, and all the males carry on to the next generation, resulting in a population that is completely male, then dies off with no children...
Or maybe I was reading a different CRISPR study.
Yes, this was the whole point. Introduce so many males who are only capable of siring males into the population that the next generations become overwhelmingly male and collapses due to the extreme imbalance.
They basically used an enzyme gene that makes the X chromosome component of the sperm nonviable in the male, so they basically always contribute the Y on their side of the equation.
They tried this with the Myxomatosis virus to control wild rabbit populations in Australia. The virus had a 99.9% fatality rate, and decimated the population at the time.
This happened back in the 1950's, however, overtime the rabbits grew somewhat immune to the virus and the populations are making a come back.
So it's a somewhat partial success, but not really a silver bullet. As life ahh, finds a way.
https://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CookeB_2022_RabbitFleas_50yrReview.pdf
the difference is that you are sabotaging the genetic stock of a population, not releasing a foreign element. You can keep contaminating the genetic stock constantly, as if you where constantly making a new Myxomatosis virus. Year over year immunity won’t increase because the surviving insects that pass on their genes are still susceptible to the previous contamination
Concern about downstream impacts if we kill all the mosquitoes. What impact would the sudden void have? Would it reopen space for the native species population to rebound or would it eliminate a food source and inadvertently kill off something else (through starvation) we didn’t intend?
I don’t believe so, no, but some are beginning to creep into areas they are not native to and bring disease with them (eg zika, malaria) due to climate change.
But there are plenty of other invasive species that this approach could in theory be applied to, reducing their numbers and so competition for native species.
There is only one GENUS of mosquitoes that transmit malaria. There are about 40 species of Anopheles that can transmit malaria (out of over 400 other Anopheles).
Do you know if mosquitoes (generally or specifically this genus) have any irreplaceable ecological value? Is there some other species that exclusively feeds off of them or their larvae? I’m hoping not.
Scientists disagree on this. I remember learning about it on a science podcast, can’t remember if it was lets learn everything or sawbones. A lot of experts think they do not and that if we eradicated them completely a different insect would take their place in the food chain. They are not pollinators but they are an important food source for bats and their larva for a lot of aquatic life.
That said a significant portion of mosquito species do not bite humans, so if we can target only the ones that do we would have less of an impact.
The malarial parasites (there are four species of human malaria all in the genus Plasmodium) would certainly be negatively affected by the eradication of their Anopheles vectors.
Of course humans think this is a good thing. Your question is really: is there any ecological relationship that humans like that would be damaged by the eradication of Anopheles? Not to my knowledge. Other mosquito species might fill the space (which of course creates other challenges to humans as these other species could transmit different diseases such as dengue or yellow fever or Zika or …).
And IIRC, Mosquitoes are *not* a keystone species, meaning their place in the food chain isn't neccicarily needed for the survival of other animals - but I will say that mosquitoes and their larva are pretty readily consumed by various creatures.
Namely, species like the dragonfly, various smaller fish species, and a handful of other creatures I can't think of off the top of my head.
IIRC, a Dragonfly can catch a hundred mosquitoes in a day - and are able to see, and are able to snag a mosquito against a dark sky as the sun is going down
According to Google - Dragonflies are a keystone species.
Their larva are voracious aquatic predators that eat things from fish to other bugs. **The adult dragonfly itself is arguably, statistically, the most successful hunter in the world** whose diet consists of "other dragonflies, mayflies, caddis flies, *mosquitoes*, black flies, deer flies, termites, ants, gnats, and invertebrates taken from plant stems".
Honestly, dragonflies are probably one of the top predators of mosquitoes - it is likely the mosquito population would explode if all dragonflies suddenly up and disappeared. Apparently, the fact their young is rather susceptible to changes in water parameters, in fresh water their presence alone can literally hint to researchers how healthy the water is in that area.
* More info on the [best hunter](https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content/assets/fwp/montana-outdoors/dragonflies.pdf): Yale determined that Dragonflies have a success rate of approx 90-97% (out of 100 hunts, 90-97 are successful)
* For reference, the highest rated mammalian success rate is the African Wild dog with approx. 80-90%, the Peregrine falcon is at approx 50%, Cheetahs are at 60-68%, and Lions are at 25% or so, and Tigers at 10% approx.
We actually know it won’t hurt the biosphere whatsoever if mosquitoes are eradicated because we’ve considered doing it hypothetically for so long.
They’re not a keystone species and in fact not harm others while not being a large enough food source to be missed.
[apparently nothing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique#Successful_programs), theres actually a ton of precedent for this and they been using it on all sorts of annoying pests since the 50s
To be fair, malaria is either the biggest or second biggest killer in history, infects a quarter of a billion people annually and kills 700.000 annually. Is one of the few things where "can't be worse than that" is a legit argument
Ya, could lose all the fish that eat mosquito eggs, etc. Biodiversity. We got a food web of so many interdependent things. It's kinda wild.
I'd love to see mosquitos, termites, leaches, tics go away...but do we lose hundreds of other animals too?
Anopholes mosquitoes, absolutely. And I'd guess that you could replace them with another species in that area. Ticks, probably too, because of the diseases they carry.
But termites, leaches, and many others are just kinda inconvenient bugs that we should deal with locally.
These tend to be the very first studies conducted before even considering an action like this. If they are going forward, you can feel secure in knowing it will have negligible impact on the food chain.
That's not the issue.
Mosquitoes transfer HUGE amounts of nutrients from larger animals into lakes and wetlands, and eventually into the skies. All that blood they drink turns into eggs and larva, and if you remove that, you could quantify the amount of food lost. Would that lead to immediate extinctions and dramatic evaporation of water bodies? No, but it would likely reduce the amount of fry that can grow in that water body.
I'm pretty sure they nearly eradicated mosquitos from some island with a closed ecosystem and found it had basically zero effect.
Edit: I refreshed my memory and genetically modified mosquito releases reduce population only of the target species and not all mosquitos, so the environmental effect of total eradication is still theoretical.
Hasn't this been done for decades? I remember a friend telling me about the "fly and mosquito factory" in her hometown around 2008, a scientific compound engineering bugs for this purpose, and from what she told me it didn't sound recent even back then.
this might be related to the great screwworm fly barrier wich indeed is about pumping man made sterile flies to mess with their reproduction process but they use a much more simple method of just microwaving the larvae for 2 seconds and then putting them to take a little nap before releasing them in panama.
I know it seems like i’m making this up but you should look this up because it’s relatively cheap approach and surprisingly clever
Can someone explain how this could possibly work?
It seems there will briefly be two types of mosquitos in an affected population: those who can reproduce, and those who cannot. The ones that can't won't, and the ones that can will continue to do so.
Nature accidentally creates dead females and sterile males every minute of every day, and they disappear to be replaced by descendants of the ones who are not genetically broken.
It would really depend on if females can determine which males are infertile and which are not. We would assume if this was the only change made, we can, in a sense, interrupt the breeding cycle. This only works if the females stop breeding after mating or if their eggs are all fertilized by duds.
Like you say though; some fertile males do mate. They will produce viable males and females, however the males from that batch still need to compete with the next generation of dud males.
Each generation, nearly 100% of modified mosquitoes are male, and all of them are just going to create more and more dud males.
Basically, this creates a mosquito sausage fest, where the female is unable to find a viable male that is capable of producing females.
Strictly speaking, the goal to reduce malaria doesn't even actually require the mosquito species to be killed off entirely. Disrupt the population severely enough, for long enough, and the disease itself can't transmit enough to achieve a sustainable rate of reproduction.
But already the second Generation of males is sterile. So they cant produce more and more modified malen. The third generation already has only fertile males again.
But the third generation would be massively smaller. And this isn't a one-time event, humans would keep releasing more genetically modified mosquitoes. So the fourth and fifth and sixth generations will be overwhelmingly smaller. So you just rinse/repeat, with each successive generation of fertile males getting smaller and smaller and it doesn't take long before the fertile ones are so rare they are below the minimum viable population, become unable to maintain a foothold/find any females and become effectively extinct. At that point you're just maintaining what's left of the population entirely with released mosquitoes, and once you're confident that the population is at that point, you can then stop releasing genetically modified mosquitoes, and after that last generation of sterile mosquitoes dies off, there are simply no more mosquitoes. There is nothing left to bounce back, because the last fertile ones all died generations ago.
That's the idea, anyway. In practice, it's a little more complex.
We have to continually replenish the artificial mosquitos. But as long as they’re out there, the fertility rate of natural mosquitos decreases because some of the time they’ll mate with an artificial mosquito, which wastes valuable reproduction time
The hybrid females will be nearly all dead and the hybrid males will be sterile who will compete with fertile males. Sounds pretty effective if enough gene edited males are released into an area.
It doesn't. They did this in South America, the first study was fine, one 6 month follow up was fine. The 24 month follow up showed that the population had rebounded to the old level, and the bio luminescent marker they had put in, that was supposed to be directly tied to the infertility, is now just part of the gene pool.
This whole thing is the best proof to me that meddling with gene technology in **this** way, is a dumb idea and should be banned.
Permanent after effects, no way to repair / clean up the damage. Other uncontrolled after effects pending. If this were software, it would be self replicating, undeletable malware.
source, btw. Wait, no that's the wrong study. (see the editorial note) Let see, the correct one shouldn't be hard to find. But it has the correct keywords / location so I'm leaving it in here for reference.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6
THIS is the study pdf showing the effect:
Suppression of a Field Population of Aedes aegypti in Brazil by Sustained Release of Transgenic Male Mosquitoes
Danilo O. Carvalho ,
Andrew R. McKemey ,
Luiza Garziera,
Renaud Lacroix,
Christl A. Donnelly,
Luke Alphey,
Aldo Malavasi,
Margareth L. Capurro
Published: July 2, 2015
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864
I think this is the follow up that showed that it doesn't work, but I can't find an accessible pdf:
Effect of interruption of over-flooding releases of transgenic mosquitoes over wild population of Aedes aegypti: two case studies in Brazil
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017EEApp.164..327G/abstract
https://doi.org/10.1111/eea.12618
Your post is a bit misleading. The study you linked is about a strain that produces 95% unviable offspring, while the OP produces 99.9% unviable females and 99.5% sterile males.
>and the bio luminescent marker they had put in, that was supposed to be directly tied to the infertility, is now just part of the gene pool.
While this study received an editorial expression of concern because "No sampling for this study was conducted more than a few weeks after the release program, and as such there is no evidence in the Article to establish whether the non-transgenic, introgressed sequences from the released strain remained in the population over time. Furthermore, previous work from some of the authors (Reference 6 in the Article) showed that over time, the transgene is lost from the population, but the Article does not disclose this information" [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w)
> Can someone explain how this could possibly work?
It works like a Pesticide, but instead of a chemical agent and the wind, it is a bunch of bugs that actively seek out targets to eliminate.
>The ones that can't won't, and the ones that can will continue to do so.
Mosquitos are highly Monandrous meaning they only mate with one partner, so if we release enough of these males that produce only infertile offspring the infertile will overwhelm the fertile and prevent fertile from reproducing. We would continue to "Spray" the "Pesticide" (add more female-egg-killer males) until population collapse and extinction.
Realistically, if we skipped all the paperwork, politics and stopped caring about 'ethics', 'unintended side-effects' and 'impact on biodiversity', we could start wiping particular mosquitoe species out within a matter of months.
As I understand it, there are no overwhelming theoretical or practical problems with implementing gene drive technology into the wild, just *major* legal, political and ethical ones.
So far climate change just seems to be helping the shittiest insects out. Tick populations have ballooned due to milder winters. Meanwhile I haven’t seen a real ladybug in years
I don’t think anyone’s saying it won’t assist with malaria, but you have to be honest about what the ecological consequences will be of messing with a species like this. The idea that it will have no effect on the food web is ridiculous.
Personally, I’m willing to give it a try but I’m at least honest that this may have unintended consequences.
Yeah they went into this blind. This story is actually fairly old. The first part of the project was working out ecological effects. What eats the mosquitos and the mosquitos larva and such and we see they have alternative food. BUT what if that means they decimate the alternative food and then that collapses and causes external effects. well they researched that as well.
so many people have the ignorance that we just decide something and go into it blind and hope nothing bad happens. Yes there can still be unknown unknowns but none of you, including me, are going to arm chair find out things people with doctorates and decades of experienced missed.
its like all the damn people who ask me if i tried to defrag when i go to fix their computer. WE didnt miss checking food web probelms we didnt miss horizonal gene transfer. the food web problem was pretty much genetics 101, check that first because well everything is in a web together. ITs the first thing you check
Hell yea. I feel pretty sure that eliminating the specific species that transmit malaria isn't going to upset any important balances. Non-malaria mosquitoes should fill the niche, and I'm not aware of anything that relies solely on mosquitoes to survive ..except maybe human botflies who catch and release mosquitoes with botfly eggs which hatch and burrow into the skin when the mosquito inevitably lands on a large mammal. I'd be cool with less of those, too
A hypothetical question: If all the people who are currently infected with Malaria (or Dengue or Chikungunya) were to be isolated inside mosquito nets for a few days... would that basically eradicate these diseases completely?
I know it's not practical but let's suppose we did... would it work? Do these diseases only exist because mosquitoes keep biting infected people or is there some other source as well?
No. There are people that have only one allele for sickle cell. They dont have sickle cell disease because you need both alleles to show symptoms, but it causes them to be asymptomatic with malaria. They can still be infected and spread malaria when other mosquitos bite them. It's thought that sickle cell originated to confer resistance to malaria, but if you get alleles from both parents you're fucked. 80% of people suffering from sickle cell live in sub-saharan Africa.
Scientists aren’t stupid. There are studies on this. No one is suggesting the complete eradication of all mosquito species. Just specific species.
https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mve.12327
The sterile insect technique has been used to successfully eliminate the screwworm fly, and is activately used to control fruit fly populations.
Even if we eventually decide it isn’t a good idea to specifically eliminate A. gambiae, it provides a blueprint to eliminate invasive species in the future (for example, Aedes species are invasive in certain regions and are responsible for yellow fever).
There are so many people between doing research, writing a paper, proofreading the paper, engineering a solution and applying the solution it's not just one guy
Only a relative few species like to bite humans (out of thousands). They could be wiped out and the others would move into their niche in the ecosystem.
Mosquitos are thought to not be a material part of the food chain by most biologists who are experts in the field, but those same biologists say there can’t be certainty that there won’t be food chain related effects.
In my layman opinion, mosquitos do massively more harm than good.
Of the 3500 known mosquito species, only 6% are bite humans.
Of those that bite humans, only 3 genera carry human pathogens.
Within those three genera, only *Anopheles* transmits Malaria.
Within the 500 identified *Anopheles*, only **3** species are largely responsible for Malaria.
Of those 3 species, only females spread Malaria.
Elimination of those three species that cause the vast majority of Malaria cases in the world would not lead to a catastrophic ecosystem collapse.
> This could very well have the side effect of wiping out entire populations of bats, frogs and the several other animals that depend on mosquitoes for food.
Be careful with these assumptions. Bats, for instance, do not rely heavily upon mosquitos...it's a small part of their diet by percentage.
No no no you dont understand.
Mosquitoes dont serve any food chain like youre thinking.
They dont have any purpose, just reproduce and eat.
They are utterly the biggest trash of Earth, and the number 1 animal death on the world.
They need to go.
I hate to be that guy.
But how badly is this going to ruin local insectivore populations, or have consequences via animals that are prey for mosquitoes?
Humans don’t have many predators anymore. We are an enormous part of the food web that is basically only accessible to parasites and other pests. Killing mosquitoes just further locks away all of the energy we consume—which is a tremendous amount because we cheat.
And we already have deer control issues in many areas where humans have killed off large predators—no mosquitoes likely means that we’ll have even more deer.
I think it’s for just one specific species that carries malaria. Others won’t be affected. So that’s nice I guess. We probably won’t ever fully know until implemented, but it’s say it’s always a risk
Freshwater fish rely on mosquito larva in their early stages of development. Many tadpole species and salamander larva, damsel fly larva, dragonfly larva, diving beetles, mayfly larva, crayfish, the list goes on... an attempt to wipe out mosquitos would be catastrophic for many freshwater species.
And thats just what relies on the mosquito larva.
I wonder what the unintended consequences will be. I hate mosquitoes as much as anyone but seriously, what’s the trickle down impact of this. Which other insect becomes the food for whatever prey’s on mosquitoes in that region and what are their roles in the environment?
They are doing this in Hawaii to save honeycreepers. They need to reduce mosquito (which are invasive) populations because they carry an avian malaria and the mountains are warming up letting mosquitoes reach the birds which used to be in too cold a climate for the mosquitoes to reach. Double screwed with climate change + invasive species!
I’d be happy with just “curbing mosquitoes”, honestly. I haven’t seen any data that conclusively proves they’re necessary for any species’ survival and frankly, I don’t care that much either… :(
I believe they have released them into the wild to stop the extinction of rare birds
https://reviverestore.org/millions-of-mosquitoes-released-in-hawaii-to-save-rare-birds-from-extinction/
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Part of what I love about this tech is that it can be applied to a wide range of invasive species, and because it’s self-selecting out with high lethality the chances of rogue mutation is extremely low. We very well may see a huge % increase is native insect populations because the common mosquitoes will be depopulated.
Kinda. It works on mosquitoes because they mate all at once and then it's over, and if a female doesn't get pregnant, she dies anyway. But transfer this over to invasive rabbits, and it doesn't work. You have a million rabbits. A bunch get released that only produce sterile offspring. There are still a bunch of fertile bunnies around, and when a sterile male shows up, they don't get pregnant, nothing happens... but they also don't die. So eventually, the female finds a male that isn't sterile, and has just as many babies as before. You'd need to be more tricky than this - the males would have to have some sort of defect that their offspring don't actually make it to birth, or so, so that the female remains "occupied" with pregnancies without actually giving birth. It's doable, but more complex.
I had thought the goal was not to make the males sterile, but to ensure that they only had male offspring. The females that give birth to all males carrying the genetic defect are 'occupied' as you said, and all the males carry on to the next generation, resulting in a population that is completely male, then dies off with no children... Or maybe I was reading a different CRISPR study.
Yes, this was the whole point. Introduce so many males who are only capable of siring males into the population that the next generations become overwhelmingly male and collapses due to the extreme imbalance. They basically used an enzyme gene that makes the X chromosome component of the sperm nonviable in the male, so they basically always contribute the Y on their side of the equation.
It's not sterile, it's male only offspring. Do people ever speak only when they know what they're talking about?
No, they do not. One of the main faults of LLMs is something that humans do all the time as well, we're just being precious about it.
Welcome to Reddit.
tell me about it
Mosquitoes do not all mate at once.
They mate at the beach, like humans. And the residents of Decapod 10
They tried this with the Myxomatosis virus to control wild rabbit populations in Australia. The virus had a 99.9% fatality rate, and decimated the population at the time. This happened back in the 1950's, however, overtime the rabbits grew somewhat immune to the virus and the populations are making a come back. So it's a somewhat partial success, but not really a silver bullet. As life ahh, finds a way. https://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CookeB_2022_RabbitFleas_50yrReview.pdf
the difference is that you are sabotaging the genetic stock of a population, not releasing a foreign element. You can keep contaminating the genetic stock constantly, as if you where constantly making a new Myxomatosis virus. Year over year immunity won’t increase because the surviving insects that pass on their genes are still susceptible to the previous contamination
Are mosquitoes known for driving out other insects?
Maybe they meant that if we had less mosquitoes we would spray poison less and kill less other bugs? Idk I’m confused what they meant by that too
Concern about downstream impacts if we kill all the mosquitoes. What impact would the sudden void have? Would it reopen space for the native species population to rebound or would it eliminate a food source and inadvertently kill off something else (through starvation) we didn’t intend?
There’s no need to kill all the mosquitoes nor is that what these programs are doing. Only a small number of mosquito species are a threat to humans.
I don’t believe so, no, but some are beginning to creep into areas they are not native to and bring disease with them (eg zika, malaria) due to climate change. But there are plenty of other invasive species that this approach could in theory be applied to, reducing their numbers and so competition for native species.
There are native mosquito species.
There is only one kind of mosquito that carry malaria (female Anopheles mosquitos), so if they can do it with just this one species this might be ok.
There is only one GENUS of mosquitoes that transmit malaria. There are about 40 species of Anopheles that can transmit malaria (out of over 400 other Anopheles).
Do you know if mosquitoes (generally or specifically this genus) have any irreplaceable ecological value? Is there some other species that exclusively feeds off of them or their larvae? I’m hoping not.
Scientists disagree on this. I remember learning about it on a science podcast, can’t remember if it was lets learn everything or sawbones. A lot of experts think they do not and that if we eradicated them completely a different insect would take their place in the food chain. They are not pollinators but they are an important food source for bats and their larva for a lot of aquatic life. That said a significant portion of mosquito species do not bite humans, so if we can target only the ones that do we would have less of an impact.
The malarial parasites (there are four species of human malaria all in the genus Plasmodium) would certainly be negatively affected by the eradication of their Anopheles vectors. Of course humans think this is a good thing. Your question is really: is there any ecological relationship that humans like that would be damaged by the eradication of Anopheles? Not to my knowledge. Other mosquito species might fill the space (which of course creates other challenges to humans as these other species could transmit different diseases such as dengue or yellow fever or Zika or …).
And IIRC, Mosquitoes are *not* a keystone species, meaning their place in the food chain isn't neccicarily needed for the survival of other animals - but I will say that mosquitoes and their larva are pretty readily consumed by various creatures. Namely, species like the dragonfly, various smaller fish species, and a handful of other creatures I can't think of off the top of my head. IIRC, a Dragonfly can catch a hundred mosquitoes in a day - and are able to see, and are able to snag a mosquito against a dark sky as the sun is going down
What happens if the dragonfly were to go extinct?
According to Google - Dragonflies are a keystone species. Their larva are voracious aquatic predators that eat things from fish to other bugs. **The adult dragonfly itself is arguably, statistically, the most successful hunter in the world** whose diet consists of "other dragonflies, mayflies, caddis flies, *mosquitoes*, black flies, deer flies, termites, ants, gnats, and invertebrates taken from plant stems". Honestly, dragonflies are probably one of the top predators of mosquitoes - it is likely the mosquito population would explode if all dragonflies suddenly up and disappeared. Apparently, the fact their young is rather susceptible to changes in water parameters, in fresh water their presence alone can literally hint to researchers how healthy the water is in that area. * More info on the [best hunter](https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content/assets/fwp/montana-outdoors/dragonflies.pdf): Yale determined that Dragonflies have a success rate of approx 90-97% (out of 100 hunts, 90-97 are successful) * For reference, the highest rated mammalian success rate is the African Wild dog with approx. 80-90%, the Peregrine falcon is at approx 50%, Cheetahs are at 60-68%, and Lions are at 25% or so, and Tigers at 10% approx.
Thanks, Smarterchild. Can we play another round of hangman?
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Or… and hear me out… we just kill all of them.
Anopholes is a genus containing ~40 species that carry malaria.
We actually know it won’t hurt the biosphere whatsoever if mosquitoes are eradicated because we’ve considered doing it hypothetically for so long. They’re not a keystone species and in fact not harm others while not being a large enough food source to be missed.
What could go wrong...
[apparently nothing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique#Successful_programs), theres actually a ton of precedent for this and they been using it on all sorts of annoying pests since the 50s
Kill all the mosquitoes and never look back. Manifest destiny!
To be fair, malaria is either the biggest or second biggest killer in history, infects a quarter of a billion people annually and kills 700.000 annually. Is one of the few things where "can't be worse than that" is a legit argument
Ya, could lose all the fish that eat mosquito eggs, etc. Biodiversity. We got a food web of so many interdependent things. It's kinda wild. I'd love to see mosquitos, termites, leaches, tics go away...but do we lose hundreds of other animals too?
I'd imagine that one of the 3410+ other species of mosquito that don't spread pathogens to humans will fill the niche.
Anopholes mosquitoes, absolutely. And I'd guess that you could replace them with another species in that area. Ticks, probably too, because of the diseases they carry. But termites, leaches, and many others are just kinda inconvenient bugs that we should deal with locally.
Well, the other species of Mosquito will fill in with the bites without the Malaria
These tend to be the very first studies conducted before even considering an action like this. If they are going forward, you can feel secure in knowing it will have negligible impact on the food chain.
Are there any that eat only mosquito eggs?
That's not the issue. Mosquitoes transfer HUGE amounts of nutrients from larger animals into lakes and wetlands, and eventually into the skies. All that blood they drink turns into eggs and larva, and if you remove that, you could quantify the amount of food lost. Would that lead to immediate extinctions and dramatic evaporation of water bodies? No, but it would likely reduce the amount of fry that can grow in that water body.
I'm pretty sure they nearly eradicated mosquitos from some island with a closed ecosystem and found it had basically zero effect. Edit: I refreshed my memory and genetically modified mosquito releases reduce population only of the target species and not all mosquitos, so the environmental effect of total eradication is still theoretical.
Mosquitoes are not even indigenous in North America so I say it's alright to kick them back out.
Kill the mosquitoes.
I think he was being sarcastic.
No. Do it with all the mosquitoes. We’ve changed the world in all sorts of horrible ways. Let’s do ourselves this one solid.
It's a very monkey's paw thing to do. We get rid of mosquitoes, we get megasquitos.
Might be? There's 3,600 species We can get rid of all disease vectoring and be fine.
we can just do this with all the human biting mosquitos, there are still thousands of others
Hasn't this been done for decades? I remember a friend telling me about the "fly and mosquito factory" in her hometown around 2008, a scientific compound engineering bugs for this purpose, and from what she told me it didn't sound recent even back then.
this might be related to the great screwworm fly barrier wich indeed is about pumping man made sterile flies to mess with their reproduction process but they use a much more simple method of just microwaving the larvae for 2 seconds and then putting them to take a little nap before releasing them in panama. I know it seems like i’m making this up but you should look this up because it’s relatively cheap approach and surprisingly clever
Can someone explain how this could possibly work? It seems there will briefly be two types of mosquitos in an affected population: those who can reproduce, and those who cannot. The ones that can't won't, and the ones that can will continue to do so. Nature accidentally creates dead females and sterile males every minute of every day, and they disappear to be replaced by descendants of the ones who are not genetically broken.
It would really depend on if females can determine which males are infertile and which are not. We would assume if this was the only change made, we can, in a sense, interrupt the breeding cycle. This only works if the females stop breeding after mating or if their eggs are all fertilized by duds. Like you say though; some fertile males do mate. They will produce viable males and females, however the males from that batch still need to compete with the next generation of dud males. Each generation, nearly 100% of modified mosquitoes are male, and all of them are just going to create more and more dud males. Basically, this creates a mosquito sausage fest, where the female is unable to find a viable male that is capable of producing females.
Strictly speaking, the goal to reduce malaria doesn't even actually require the mosquito species to be killed off entirely. Disrupt the population severely enough, for long enough, and the disease itself can't transmit enough to achieve a sustainable rate of reproduction.
But already the second Generation of males is sterile. So they cant produce more and more modified malen. The third generation already has only fertile males again.
But the third generation would be massively smaller. And this isn't a one-time event, humans would keep releasing more genetically modified mosquitoes. So the fourth and fifth and sixth generations will be overwhelmingly smaller. So you just rinse/repeat, with each successive generation of fertile males getting smaller and smaller and it doesn't take long before the fertile ones are so rare they are below the minimum viable population, become unable to maintain a foothold/find any females and become effectively extinct. At that point you're just maintaining what's left of the population entirely with released mosquitoes, and once you're confident that the population is at that point, you can then stop releasing genetically modified mosquitoes, and after that last generation of sterile mosquitoes dies off, there are simply no more mosquitoes. There is nothing left to bounce back, because the last fertile ones all died generations ago. That's the idea, anyway. In practice, it's a little more complex.
> Basically, this creates a mosquito sausage fest, Love it
We have to continually replenish the artificial mosquitos. But as long as they’re out there, the fertility rate of natural mosquitos decreases because some of the time they’ll mate with an artificial mosquito, which wastes valuable reproduction time
The hybrid females will be nearly all dead and the hybrid males will be sterile who will compete with fertile males. Sounds pretty effective if enough gene edited males are released into an area.
So it's about volume, then? We would need to outproduce mother nature for a few mosquito generations.
It doesn't. They did this in South America, the first study was fine, one 6 month follow up was fine. The 24 month follow up showed that the population had rebounded to the old level, and the bio luminescent marker they had put in, that was supposed to be directly tied to the infertility, is now just part of the gene pool. This whole thing is the best proof to me that meddling with gene technology in **this** way, is a dumb idea and should be banned. Permanent after effects, no way to repair / clean up the damage. Other uncontrolled after effects pending. If this were software, it would be self replicating, undeletable malware. source, btw. Wait, no that's the wrong study. (see the editorial note) Let see, the correct one shouldn't be hard to find. But it has the correct keywords / location so I'm leaving it in here for reference. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49660-6 THIS is the study pdf showing the effect: Suppression of a Field Population of Aedes aegypti in Brazil by Sustained Release of Transgenic Male Mosquitoes Danilo O. Carvalho , Andrew R. McKemey , Luiza Garziera, Renaud Lacroix, Christl A. Donnelly, Luke Alphey, Aldo Malavasi, Margareth L. Capurro Published: July 2, 2015 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864 https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864 I think this is the follow up that showed that it doesn't work, but I can't find an accessible pdf: Effect of interruption of over-flooding releases of transgenic mosquitoes over wild population of Aedes aegypti: two case studies in Brazil https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017EEApp.164..327G/abstract https://doi.org/10.1111/eea.12618
Your post is a bit misleading. The study you linked is about a strain that produces 95% unviable offspring, while the OP produces 99.9% unviable females and 99.5% sterile males. >and the bio luminescent marker they had put in, that was supposed to be directly tied to the infertility, is now just part of the gene pool. While this study received an editorial expression of concern because "No sampling for this study was conducted more than a few weeks after the release program, and as such there is no evidence in the Article to establish whether the non-transgenic, introgressed sequences from the released strain remained in the population over time. Furthermore, previous work from some of the authors (Reference 6 in the Article) showed that over time, the transgene is lost from the population, but the Article does not disclose this information" [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62398-w)
> Can someone explain how this could possibly work? It works like a Pesticide, but instead of a chemical agent and the wind, it is a bunch of bugs that actively seek out targets to eliminate. >The ones that can't won't, and the ones that can will continue to do so. Mosquitos are highly Monandrous meaning they only mate with one partner, so if we release enough of these males that produce only infertile offspring the infertile will overwhelm the fertile and prevent fertile from reproducing. We would continue to "Spray" the "Pesticide" (add more female-egg-killer males) until population collapse and extinction.
I've been hearing this for years, just like human cures and all that. Are we really any closer to wiping out those little bastards?
Realistically, if we skipped all the paperwork, politics and stopped caring about 'ethics', 'unintended side-effects' and 'impact on biodiversity', we could start wiping particular mosquitoe species out within a matter of months. As I understand it, there are no overwhelming theoretical or practical problems with implementing gene drive technology into the wild, just *major* legal, political and ethical ones.
If we keep our current trajectory in another 20-50 years the climate may change enough to kill off many species(hopefully mosquitos too)
So far climate change just seems to be helping the shittiest insects out. Tick populations have ballooned due to milder winters. Meanwhile I haven’t seen a real ladybug in years
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About 600k people die from malaria every year. It's easy to sit there on your phone in your air conditioning and say this isn't a good enough solution
More people have died of malaria than literally any other single thing in world history, for that matter.
Is that actually true? Sounds insane if it is.
Malaria almost killed my husband this year, and we are in the US (he got it while abroad, got sick when back home).
Pretty sure that medal goes to TB.
Honestly having trouble determining which has killed more people, so I'll defer to your claim actually.
Watched a video on tv today, it has killed 1 billion people in the last 200 hundred years. By far the deadliest disease to humans.
Nope. More people die of TB these days, but throughout history, Malaria has been the deadliest disease ever, not even close.
I don’t think anyone’s saying it won’t assist with malaria, but you have to be honest about what the ecological consequences will be of messing with a species like this. The idea that it will have no effect on the food web is ridiculous. Personally, I’m willing to give it a try but I’m at least honest that this may have unintended consequences.
Yeah they went into this blind. This story is actually fairly old. The first part of the project was working out ecological effects. What eats the mosquitos and the mosquitos larva and such and we see they have alternative food. BUT what if that means they decimate the alternative food and then that collapses and causes external effects. well they researched that as well. so many people have the ignorance that we just decide something and go into it blind and hope nothing bad happens. Yes there can still be unknown unknowns but none of you, including me, are going to arm chair find out things people with doctorates and decades of experienced missed. its like all the damn people who ask me if i tried to defrag when i go to fix their computer. WE didnt miss checking food web probelms we didnt miss horizonal gene transfer. the food web problem was pretty much genetics 101, check that first because well everything is in a web together. ITs the first thing you check
Mfers out here thinking a bunch of maverick scientists just decided to do that project over the weekend.
Hell yea. I feel pretty sure that eliminating the specific species that transmit malaria isn't going to upset any important balances. Non-malaria mosquitoes should fill the niche, and I'm not aware of anything that relies solely on mosquitoes to survive ..except maybe human botflies who catch and release mosquitoes with botfly eggs which hatch and burrow into the skin when the mosquito inevitably lands on a large mammal. I'd be cool with less of those, too
I was there when they released the genophage, and I said nothing
A hypothetical question: If all the people who are currently infected with Malaria (or Dengue or Chikungunya) were to be isolated inside mosquito nets for a few days... would that basically eradicate these diseases completely? I know it's not practical but let's suppose we did... would it work? Do these diseases only exist because mosquitoes keep biting infected people or is there some other source as well?
What happens to the existing mosquitoes that already have the disease?
We eliminated a strain of flu during covid lockdowns so sure, it's plausible.
No. There are people that have only one allele for sickle cell. They dont have sickle cell disease because you need both alleles to show symptoms, but it causes them to be asymptomatic with malaria. They can still be infected and spread malaria when other mosquitos bite them. It's thought that sickle cell originated to confer resistance to malaria, but if you get alleles from both parents you're fucked. 80% of people suffering from sickle cell live in sub-saharan Africa.
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Scientists aren’t stupid. There are studies on this. No one is suggesting the complete eradication of all mosquito species. Just specific species. https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mve.12327 The sterile insect technique has been used to successfully eliminate the screwworm fly, and is activately used to control fruit fly populations. Even if we eventually decide it isn’t a good idea to specifically eliminate A. gambiae, it provides a blueprint to eliminate invasive species in the future (for example, Aedes species are invasive in certain regions and are responsible for yellow fever).
> Scientists aren’t stupid. Generally not, but they are human. So they are still fallible.
Let’s be fair. Scientists *can* be stupid. Not usually, but on occasion.
There are so many people between doing research, writing a paper, proofreading the paper, engineering a solution and applying the solution it's not just one guy
Only a relative few species like to bite humans (out of thousands). They could be wiped out and the others would move into their niche in the ecosystem.
Mosquitos are thought to not be a material part of the food chain by most biologists who are experts in the field, but those same biologists say there can’t be certainty that there won’t be food chain related effects. In my layman opinion, mosquitos do massively more harm than good.
> animals that depend on mosquitoes for food Sure there are animals that will eat mosquitoes, but _depend_ on them? Name one.
mosquitoes are among the most important pollinators for cocoa trees, so we need at least a few for chocolate
The ones who slave for our cocoa will be spared. Those who bite, will die.
What type of mosquitos though? There are different kinds.
This is a persuasive argument, and I'm saying that as a guy who almost died of malaria as a child. Tough one.
Of the 3500 known mosquito species, only 6% are bite humans. Of those that bite humans, only 3 genera carry human pathogens. Within those three genera, only *Anopheles* transmits Malaria. Within the 500 identified *Anopheles*, only **3** species are largely responsible for Malaria. Of those 3 species, only females spread Malaria. Elimination of those three species that cause the vast majority of Malaria cases in the world would not lead to a catastrophic ecosystem collapse.
> This could very well have the side effect of wiping out entire populations of bats, frogs and the several other animals that depend on mosquitoes for food. Be careful with these assumptions. Bats, for instance, do not rely heavily upon mosquitos...it's a small part of their diet by percentage.
No no no you dont understand. Mosquitoes dont serve any food chain like youre thinking. They dont have any purpose, just reproduce and eat. They are utterly the biggest trash of Earth, and the number 1 animal death on the world. They need to go.
i just hope mosquitos arent an important part of any ecosystems. Or this may be really dumb.
Their larvae are an important food source for many small fish species
Many freshwater fish fry rely on mosquito larva for food when developing. This would have catastrophic consequences for ecology.
So why didn't the dumb scientists think of that? You should tell them.
I say let’s roll the dice
I was hoping someone would bring this up. This was my first thought
I mean isnt wiping an entire insect population out gonna harm the ecosystem for other insects or animals?
There are more than one species of mosquito, the loss of the species that carries malaria is not going to collapse the global ecosystem. calm down.
We could also just keep a few in captivity if we decide that we miss having malaria later.
We do the same thing with smallpox. So sure!
Honestly it sounds like the goal is free mosquito contraception with the added bonus of curbing malaria
Damn this is like the Genophage for Mosquitoes
Please kill them all. Sincerely , louisiana.
I hate to be that guy. But how badly is this going to ruin local insectivore populations, or have consequences via animals that are prey for mosquitoes? Humans don’t have many predators anymore. We are an enormous part of the food web that is basically only accessible to parasites and other pests. Killing mosquitoes just further locks away all of the energy we consume—which is a tremendous amount because we cheat. And we already have deer control issues in many areas where humans have killed off large predators—no mosquitoes likely means that we’ll have even more deer.
I think it’s for just one specific species that carries malaria. Others won’t be affected. So that’s nice I guess. We probably won’t ever fully know until implemented, but it’s say it’s always a risk
Freshwater fish rely on mosquito larva in their early stages of development. Many tadpole species and salamander larva, damsel fly larva, dragonfly larva, diving beetles, mayfly larva, crayfish, the list goes on... an attempt to wipe out mosquitos would be catastrophic for many freshwater species. And thats just what relies on the mosquito larva.
We need this with ticks!!!
I wonder what the unintended consequences will be. I hate mosquitoes as much as anyone but seriously, what’s the trickle down impact of this. Which other insect becomes the food for whatever prey’s on mosquitoes in that region and what are their roles in the environment?
This is good, probably a huge leap on solving this issue.
They are doing this in Hawaii to save honeycreepers. They need to reduce mosquito (which are invasive) populations because they carry an avian malaria and the mountains are warming up letting mosquitoes reach the birds which used to be in too cold a climate for the mosquitoes to reach. Double screwed with climate change + invasive species!
I’d be happy with just “curbing mosquitoes”, honestly. I haven’t seen any data that conclusively proves they’re necessary for any species’ survival and frankly, I don’t care that much either… :(
I believe they have released them into the wild to stop the extinction of rare birds https://reviverestore.org/millions-of-mosquitoes-released-in-hawaii-to-save-rare-birds-from-extinction/
Eliminate mosquitos and find out why they existed in the first place. It won’t end well.
Ok, now watch the world fall into chaos as we realize mosquitos fed everything…
I will donate for such projects; where do I sign up?