Hacker News Reader

Comment by hubert123 | Hacker News Reader

I dont get it, if you release a ton of sterile male mosquitos.. what exactly is their purpose? They cant bite, breed or spread diseases.. well okay, but why would the amount of bad mosquitos decrease in any way from their introduction? Wouldnt they simply die out quickly then, what's the lifespan of these good mosquitos? I dont get it at all.

View on HN

http://debugproject.com/how/

Looks like they mate with females, which still lay eggs, but the won't hatch. So less bad bugs mate and produce offspring. Needs large numbers of good bugs though.

Yeah it sounds like it would be better if the eggs still hatched but they should only produce good male mosquitos again.

They're only 'good' because they're sterile, and capable of sabotaging mosquito reproduction. If they weren't sterile and "only produce good male mosquitos again", the population would not decrease, they would just be releasing regular male mosquitos.

right, which means that eventually the entire population would be male and then die off

I was about to say that's impossible because meiosis produces equal number of "male" and "female" cells but... someone actually did it. https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/06/eradic...

It would result in a lot of "childless mosquito marriages". Do this each year for a few breeding seasons and the population will die out. Run the math, it happens surprisingly quickly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com