Comment by b_b
8 years ago
Instead of the sarcasm, please elaborate on the harmful effects of complete mosquito removal (those that carry diseases) from the ecosystem. These bugs cause an immense number of death and suffering every year, and eliminating them seems a good solution in that it removes the carrier of the diseases, eliminating the disease without having to worry about finding cures and expanding health care access in a lot of the impoverished places where these diseases strike the hardest.
Male mosquitoes pollinate many plants that keep ecosystems in balance. Plants that bees normally don't pollinate.
Plus they are a food source for many other animals, including birds.
In Florida, the state uses university researchers to try estimating populations of mosquitoes that can keep ecosystems mostly in balance, along with prevent too much outbreak in disease. Hell, a lot of the state workers are uni grads that deal with mosquito populations. Since the 90s, they've been doing pretty well with all the research gathered since the 1920s.
In this case, I bet we're going to get something similar to Mao's great ecological experiment with eradicating sparrows and whatever the other pests were. Not as severe. But, in a few years, "Yea, that was really stupid".
Humans have a very good history of fucking up ecosystems. We think "we know better" or "I have this great idea!" or even "I have this totally under control". No. We don't. We're morons when it comes to controlling ecosystems. I also find "I don't see how this can go wrong" to be a fault in logic. Just because YOU can't figure out how something can go wrong, doesn't mean it will not go wrong. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.
Nobody is trying to eliminate all mosquitoes. Just a tiny fraction of mosquito species.
And infecting one species with a bacteria that alter's their reproductive system could never transfer to animals that consumes them?
Before reinventing the wheel, why not look at Florida's century long research into controlling mosquito transmitted diseases? All the failures and successes. The chemicals used only affect certain hormones that occur in mosquito life cycles and have not been found in other critters. Even with that, they use it as sparingly as possible. Only if larva and pupa populations are in excess of normal levels. "Outbreaks" are considered in the single digits in a week's span. And when they do occur, they're dealt with swiftly.
Just because you can't see the domino at the end of the line, doesn't mean it won't fall. I have no faith in silicon valley corporations. They've built themselves up on the platform that "We know best". What's worse, they believe their own bullshit.
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It would have disastrous consequences for the food chain - the bird population in particular being hit hard.
These mosquitoes are non-native in the areas they are being removed. Can you walk us through the "disastrous" consequences of removing them. Why is introducing non-native wildlife OK, but removing nonnative species not OK?
"Non-native" is a much fuzzier term than it seems. There wasn't really any absolute blessed state of perfection that populations were in before humans started having an impact on the world, you know.
All the reports I have read indicated no species has mosquito's or their larva as its primary or even a significant food source. So the impact of wiping out only one species of the thousands of mosquito species as alphabet is planning seems very low risk indeed. This species doesn't even live in the far north where birds eat the larva in the tundra as a part of their diet, so it wouldn't affect birds at all.
Changing the ecosystem can have ripple effects that we cannot foresee due to our limited knowledge. The so called butterfly effect. Throughout history there are plenty of cases of humans changing the ecosystem with disastrous consequences for local wildlife.
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia
I don't know if exterminating mosquitoes will be good or bad for us. What I am saying is that we've got far bigger problems to solve first and in this case priorities do matter. What if exterminating mosquitoes will also exterminate various bird species? Well, some people might be willing to pay that price, but thinking of the butterfly effect, this being in the context of global warming and human driven mass extinction of animals, so can we really afford to exterminate animal species right now? And I think the answer to that question is no.
So eliminating mosquito might be a great idea, but I hope the people responsible for it will do their homework.
Fair enough, I will elaborate on this: we have no idea what the effects will be. It could be anything from "nothing bad happens" to apocalypse. Maybe we shouldn't do things that have such a wide range of possible outcomes. Maybe.
If you look into it a bit, you'll find that the article title I assume you are reacting to isn't quite right. They are targeting a very tiny slice of mosquito species that both bite humans and carry malaria. The scientists involved (who are world-class in this field) have run the numbers on the effects of eliminating these species. This isn't childsplay, and at risk are millions of human lives. Mosquitos reproduce very quickly and if these species are removed then another will easily take their places. This is not like someone deleting all files of a certain extension in an OS directory to just see what happens, this is careful and researched biotechnology being put to use to end suffering.
>> The scientists involved (who are world-class in this field) have run the numbers on the effects of eliminating these species.
FTA: "It’s unclear what would happen if the world’s disease-causing mosquitoes were done away with. The ecological role that mosquitoes play hasn’t been thoroughly studied, though some scientists suggest we might be just fine without them.”
At least as reported in this article there seems to be a lot more doubt about what could/would happen than you suggest.
You want someone to elaborate on the unintended consequences?
To explain what we don’t know?
Can you prove there will be no negative consequences?
Insects get eaten by all kinds of other animals as food. In Germany insecticide contributes to a decline in the song bird population.