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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Going back to the conversations we've had in the Zika thread[1], why are we OK with eliminating the Guinea Worm, but not certain species of mosquitoes?

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322885

A lot of people in that thread made the argument that we shouldn't exterminate a species without first fully understanding the consequences. Yet we seem to be doing that here with this parasite, and no one seems to be saying, "but... think of the ecosystem!"

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One factor is that there is a lot less "we" involved with the Guinea Worm.

I mean, good luck suppressing the knowledge that filtering your drinking water through a cloth prevents a devastating episode where a 3 foot worm crawls out of your body.

The proposed programs for eradicating mosquitoes involve things like releasing millions of dollars of genetically modified mosquitoes and putting larvicides and insecticides in all known bodies of standing water.

Using gene drive doesn't require releasing huge number of modified mosquitos, and doesn't require larvicides.

The fact that we've unintentionally wiped out so many species lends credence to the idea that, on average, very few individual specie are all that important. Of course, just leave it to us to find the exception someday...

And introduced destructive species like kudzu and the grey squirrel. These have results which are certainly bad, but far far away from causing any kind of catastrophic ecological collapse.

The demise of the Red Squirrel (in the UK) maybe more due the the loss of habitat than than because of the Grey Squirrel. The Grey Squirrel may just be a convenient scapegoat.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/infd-8c8bhc

With mosquitos the discussion does tend to meander around what I see as the core issue: the wisdom of developing and field testing a technology capable of eradicating a target species.

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v34/n1/full/nbt.3439.html

Mosquitoes are an essential part of the diet of many species: birds, spiders, toads, small rodents. The assumption is that those species could find replacements, but it is still a major change.

The Guinea worm presumably does not represent a significant ecological step.

>>Mosquitoes are an essential part of the diet of many species: birds, spiders, toads, small rodents. The assumption is that those species could find replacements, but it is still a major change.

According to one of the commenters in the Zika thread, who claims to have done research on the issue, there are no known species that feed primarily on mosquitoes. Therefore, eradicating them would probably not cause too much damage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12324390

Besides, we aren't talking about eradicating all mosquitoes. Only the few species that bite humans.

I agree with the idea of the unknown consequences of eliminating pieces of ecosystems. We've seen the impact of the removal of apex predators like wolves, and movements like rewilding champion the idea of reintroduction, rebalancing of the ecosystem through brining such animals back. So we seem to think that maintaining ecosystems is important now. Complexity theory and modeling could be very useful to "estimating" the impact of eradication, I'm not sure how the impact is being evaluated though. (In the future can man-made animals step in and play vital positions in ecosystems, like biological shims when we realize the importance or primary role a species played within that ecosystem?)

Rewilding References:

1. Reintroducing Wolves in Scotland: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33017511

2. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding_(conservation_biolog...

3. Rewilding Institute: http://rewilding.org/rewildit/

The obvious ecological impact of erradicating the guinea worm is decreased pressure on the population of Humans. However, most people would agree that it is not ethical to intentionally allow diseases to roam free as a way to control the size of human populations...

As a contrarian in these topics, without being able to prove it, i assume that nothing terribly Bad can come from exterminating a species, even if it were bees, and their connections to the ecosystem are well understood. Nature is a rough place as niches tend to fill up extremely fast.

So if we were to exterminate mosquitos, my gut says we'd survive it. But luckily my gut doesnt make Policy.

Nature rebalances extremely fast but its does so by catastrophically changing into a different state instead of having old niches be refilled. One of the famous examples is how experimentally removing starfish (a sea urchin predator) from a kelp forest resulted in an explosion of the sea urchin population and a transformation of the kelp forest into a "sea urchin desert".

There was a nice article linked in HN about this recently:

http://nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-s...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824375

I'm absolutely ok with eliminating most (or all, really) species of mosquitoes.

I'm optimistic that in the (very near) future the ability to do this rests with a few people who decide it is worth doing, and worth spending single digit millions of dollars to do it, vs. any organization with a deliberative, democratic process.

It would be hilarious to successfully wipe out mosquitoes and then have people try to sue (or governments attempt criminal charges).

Erradicating a parasite like the the guinea worm is a bit like erradicating Smallpox or Polio. The ecossystem impact that you would expect is a change in human population due to the improved health.

However, we consider it more ethical to control the size of the human population with voluntary birth control instead of terrible diseases :)

Unlike the Guinea worm, mosquitos are non-specific predators. Guinea worm can be eliminated by having a season without any humans infected, the only way to get rid of mosquitoes is to kill, every single one.

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