Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno | Hacker News Reader

Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno

techcrunch.com

545 pointschriskanan215 comments

This is called the sterile insect technique, and it is a well-established practice for getting rid of mosquito populations that could threaten humans. It is very safe, both to humans (male mosquitoes don't bite) and ecologically (species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all).

It sounds like Google is working on improvements to the process. This is important work, because mosquitos are a major cause of disease, especially in Africa, and we haven't been able to fully solve the problem with existing technology.

I'm pretty sure wolbachia prevents viral replication, not reproduction of the mosquito.

The article confuses this too, talking about elimination of the mosquito from the area (or I'm just missing something).

wolbachia prevents (sexual) reproduction in various insects by a process called "Cytoplasmic incompatibility". This requires infected male to fertilize a non-infected female.

<disclaimer: IANAB>

"Other researchers are experimenting with Wolbachia as a means of suppressing Aedes mosquito populations. This approach involves the release of only male mosquitoes with Wolbachia. When these mosquitoes mate with wild female mosquitoes without Wolbachia, they are unable to reproduce. The technique requires the release of a large number of male mosquitoes to reduce the overall mosquito population. As with insecticides, this technique would need to be reapplied over time as the population of mosquitoes gradually returns."[0]

[0] - http://www.eliminatedengue.com/our-research/wolbachia

The article links to the project's announcement, https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi... , which says

> "Debug Fresno will target the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can transmit diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Aedes aegypti first appeared in the central valley of California in 2013, and since then has become pervasive in Fresno County. This study will be the largest U.S. release to-date of sterile male mosquitoes treated with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacterium, and will take place over a 20 week period in two neighborhoods each approximately 300 acres in size. When these sterile males mate with wild females the resulting eggs will not hatch."

So it's targeting the mosquitoes themselves, not just the viruses they carry.

Ah cool! TIL

> "In 2016, CMAD and MosquitoMate piloted the first-ever U.S. release of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with Wolbachia in Fresno County. Our 2017 collaboration represents a more than 25x increase in the release efforts, with a total of one million non-biting sterile male mosquitoes released weekly, made possible by the automated mass rearing and sex-sorting processes developed at Verily. Additionally, our software algorithms and on-the-ground release devices will allow us to distribute the sterile male mosquitoes in an even and targeted way throughout Fresno’s mosquito season. We believe that these advancements could have a meaningful impact on what is traditionally a very labor-intensive process and could reduce the number of biting Aedes aegypti in Fresno County."

So the improvements are a mass-production technique that produces sterile mosquitos in large enough quantities to wipe out the wild ones, and software to determine where to release them for best effect.

Where is the quote from?

> Where is the quote from?

Coincidentally, Google isn't just in the business of releasing mosquitoes, but has other useful functions.

https://blog.verily.com/2017/07/debug-fresno-our-first-us-fi...

I copied a sentence from the quote and did a search for it. The only result with the sentence was this HN post.

Thanks for the snark, though.

Apologies for snark.

I searched - on the entire quoted string - two hours after you. It's weird, but not entirely infeasible, that google had indexed HN before verily, but if that URL is to be believed that blog was posted ~1 day earlier.

The google bubble may be downgrading the value of certain results for you, but shouldn't be actively hiding them. If you're still not seeing the result by whole or sub-string, perhaps try an incognito (or similar) browser, just in case your search engine, browser, or an extension is protecting you from something.

Searching for the same sentence now places the Verily article at #1, the Verge at #2, and HN at #3.

I thought the snark was funny and good.

Can they do something similar for ticks. Ticks seem to be picking up steam as a disease vector spreading more than just Lime disease, as if that were not enough.

you're not lying. Upstate New York and it's deer tick population seem to be breeding some terrifying diseases.

It's hit southern Ontario bad the past few years as well. It's a shame.

Seems the tick population is increasing the The Netherlands as well [0]. I am kinda scared to go outside in nature in The Netherlands, due to these little buggers.

---

[0]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/lyme-disease_b_31135...

I am kinda scared to go outside in nature in The Netherlands, due to these little buggers

Your fear isn't completely irrational, but not going outside anymore because of it would be (imo). Learning how to avoid them, or find them, or remove them, or spot symptoms (all in that order) should make the chances of any serious damage quite small. E.g. people often seem to forget it takes time, up to many hours, from a tick landing on your clothes to actually bite. (anecdotal, but I've spotted tens of times more ticks on me than I've actually been bitten). That is already quite a barrier: proper clothing + knowing how and where to check can reduce the chance of getting bitten. And even the, not all is lost. As it takes again many hours before any possible disease transmits. If there is already a disease, to start with. Since you're talking about the Netherlands: there's quite a difference between areas when it comes to rick of ticks actually carrying Lyme, see https://www.tekenradar.nl/ for instance.

> I've spotted tens of times more ticks on me than I've actually been bitten

How many total is that?

Never mind. You convinced me to never go outside, even if you were advocating the opposite.

How many total is that?

Bitten? Past 10 years like 15 times or so. Spotted on my clothes or on me easily over 100.

You convinced me to never go outside

You're kidding, right? I got all those ticks just because I knowingly spent time in specific tick-heavy areas. I could also have chosen to avoid them, and those numbers would be close to zero.

Ticks are terrble. Also lice. A parent yesterday told me her kid got them and she had some lice expert spend three hours removing them with a brush. haha

Yeah, a very fine comb is the best way to get rid of lice (and their eggs, more importantly) - they're quite resistant to the meds/chemicals on the market, even most of the prescription ones.

The meat allergy thing is nightmare fuel.

The tick/lyme disease problem is indeed serious. I think you would have to control influence acorn production though there since acorn abundance seems to be linchpin.

see:

http://www.caryinstitute.org/science-program/research-projec...

I'm still mad that the Lyme disease vaccine was killed by anti-vaxxers. If not for those people, ticks would be about as annoying as leeches.

That would completely depend on your definition of 'annoying': ticks spread more diseases than just Lyme. For example, I'm really not sure whether Human Anaplasmosis [1] is only as annoying as a leech.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html

There's also the one that induces a severe, life-long allergy to red meat. https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives-people...

Lyme disease is a couple times more common than other diseases, and it can have permanent, sometimes debilitating effects. In many people it can be hard to recognize or diagnose before permanent effects set in. The other things you can get just make you sick.

But true, its very hard to get sick from a leech. A mosquito or black fly would be a better comparison. Without the vaccine, ticks are second only to like... bot flies and tarantula wasps.

Could you be more specific about vaccination opponents aspect?

Here [1] is an article:

> The idea that the vaccine could cause this “autoimmune arthritis” stemmed from a hypothesis, named the molecular mimicry hypothesis, which suggested that the protein used in the vaccine displayed similarity to a protein found in the human body, but was still different enough to be recognized as foreign by the immune system. This would mean that, alongside attacking the foreign bacterial protein, the immune system would also start targeting the normal human protein and thus lead to an autoimmune reaction.

It's not quite as simple as "anti-vaxxers shut it down", but it's also pretty clear that an effective, useful vaccine is unavailable for largely political (or non-medical) reasons.

[1] http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/thanks-anti-va...

Same thing as the "vaccines cause autism" crowd. For Lyme disease, it was fear that it would cause arthritis (Lyme disease causes arthritis). Despite repeated proof that it did not, the vaccine was banned in the US.

Interesting, did not know about this. One article about the subject: http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/thanks-anti-va...

Isn't there another technique that leads to mosquitos producing only male offspring? That strikes me as a much better technique, as the mosquito population doesn't die off after one generation, instead females keep diminishing until there are none left.

Gene drives can create resistance easily.

Avoiding CRISPR-Mediated Gene-Drive–Evolved Resistance in Mosquitoes http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/avoiding-crisp...

Yep. They made the process much more efficient, they can release 25x per week of mosquitos of what the startup they are working with could do before.

This is by doing automation - a robot that rear moskuitos , removes females from the group, automatically releases mosquitos at the right area, result measurement tools, etc.

Another interesting thing:reading this, and the recent news about Google entering geo-thermal power generation - One gets the notion that Google found a way to locate areas with a decent solution available, but that just needed scaling - developing cheaper processes and tools, working with cities and government and financing institutions, etc.

And doing that is much easier than inventing new stuff in really hard areas, like the previous approach of Alphabet.

And i could see how having the best search engine in the world, all that data, all that "AI" capability could enable an automated or half-automated "lead sensing" approach such as this.

Are you certain the robot removes females? That doesn't sound easy.

See "Step 3": https://debug.com/how/

It doesn't really explain though. Are the sensors detecting something chemically unique to males / females? Or are they taking images of each mosquito and differentiating between them with ML?

I believe one way is to generate a frequency similar to female wingbeat frequency that attracts male mosquitoes and separate them that way. I am unsure if there is a difference in the frequency between genders.

Lesbian mosquitos...hello?

As long as they're inclined to seek out females in the wild and spread the mosquito STD, they could be just as useful as males :)

There absolutely is a difference in sound. If you hear a mosquito, it's female. Males are silent.

This is how the photo fence from intellectual ventures detects and destroys female mosquitoes.Unfortunately they never released that tech as open source

My first thoughts on seeing the URL: That's a fantastic, super geeky domain name.

I would love to see the complete eradication of these pest species; what a great effort by said Alphabet team.

There's some margin of error, and it would be interesting to see what that is, tbh.

Does no one remember Jurassic Park?

Yes; Scary movie.

The strategy of releasing sterile males to reduce populations has been used for decades.

This adds the sterilization of eggs carried by the mated females, so that females can't subsequently mate with wild, fertile males. This is a big upgrade.

It's a huge win for humanity if they can improve it significantly. Just a few stats:

"The WHO estimates that in 2015 there were 214 million new cases of malaria resulting in 438,000 deaths" [1].

"The majority of cases (65%) occur in children under 15" [2] years old."

1. http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report...

2. Murray et al. (2012). "Global malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010: A systematic analysis". Lancet. 379

I don't know anything about this, but is there a possibility of this having negative unintended side effects?

That possibility always exists, but it's hard to see how it could be worse than the half a million deaths per year that is currently attributed to mosquitoes.

It is very safe ... ecologically (species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all)

In this case it seems to be for a species of mosquitos only having arrived in 2013. Could even call that an invasive and exotic, so no, it won't be misssed.

However in other situations this might be a bit of a stretch: mosquito larvae are part of the aquatic food chain. After that stage they become food for e.g. birds, spiders, bats. So it's really not as simple as 'other species arent't affected', instead it would have to be considered on a per-case basis whether that truly is the case. I can imagine certain localized climates where mosquitos and their larvae make up a critical percentage of the food chain in a way that, should they all disappear, other species start to suffer as well.

That being said: mosquitos are considered the most dangerous insects, so even if destroying them weren't 100% safe in one way or another, that would probably not at all outweight the benefit (for humans) to not get rid of them.

edit was too fast again, see toplevel comment by WaxProlix for example, which also addresses this issue and was already there for hours :]

I recall hearing when I was younger that mosquitoes were an outlier in the natural world. With most species, the balance of any food web would be pretty thoroughly disrupted by a major culling. As I heard it, this isn't the case for mosquitoes - if you could press a button and kill them all tomorrow, most ecosystems would be largely unimpacted.

Am I just making this up/misremembering it?

Edit: found a few sources.

Pro-mosquitocide:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes...

Anti-mosquitocide:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-...

I can only confirm that I heard that as well, but have no idea how true it is.

Mosquitoes are also pollinators.

I believe orchids are one flower that is mostly pollinated by mosquitoes.

In this case, the particular species that carries Zika (aedes aegypti) does not pollinate any plant species in any meaningful way.

I believe I recall reading that if we were to eliminate only the disease carry mosquitoes, those responsible for transmitting maleria, dengue fever, Ross river virus) there ought not be a problem in the ecological web of life as other mosquitoes would fill the void.

Yes. Most mosquito species do not actually bite.

They don't feed on people, or they don't feed in general? If the latter, how do they even survive? They eat in their larval form but then not as adults?

The Wikipedia article has more detail:

Typically, both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices, but in many species the mouthparts of the females are adapted for piercing the skin of animal hosts and sucking their blood as ectoparasites. In many species, the female needs to obtain nutrients from a blood meal before it can produce eggs, whereas in many other species, it can produce more eggs after a blood meal. A mosquito has a variety of ways of finding its prey, including chemical, visual, and heat sensors.[36] Both plant materials and blood are useful sources of energy in the form of sugars, and blood also supplies more concentrated nutrients, such as lipids, but the most important function of blood meals is to obtain proteins as materials for egg production.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults

Let's pick out each mosquito one by one to check which one we should kill or release then.

They are a food source, but generally not a critical one.

I did a bit of research a while back, and it seemed to agree. Mosquitoes don't keep any other species in check (since their victims rarely die), and they aren't a primary food source for anything; bats will snap them up all night long, but they're still a minority of the stomach contents because they're so small. They are pollinators--I hadn't known that--but, again, they're not primary pollinators for anything, not like bees.

I don't recall reading anything specific about the larvae's importance in aquatic biomes, though, so the anti-mosquitocide guy may have a point.

Maybe they keep bats too busy to eat a more nutritious prey animal, and keep the population from expanding though malnourishment? Similar to the diet of a panda bear, though they unfortunately have no higher-caloric alternative.

I think mammals are smart enough to eat the food with the most nutritions per effort.

Pandas and Koalas have extremely poor diets in terms of nutrition. It's likely there are other examples as well.

Looks like evolutionary dead end.

I believe this is the case for most organisms. Even humans are included.

Only a relative few would cause wide spread extinction.

I've heard that certain places have remained naturally pristine because mosquitoes have prevented humans from establishing there. I think there is something to this line of thinking.

These tend to be swampy wetlands, and people have drained and developed swamps all the time for hundreds of years.

... in part because they hate all the bugs.

Your "pro" articles: Nature, and National Geographic.

Your "anti" article: Gawker.

Yeah, I think we're safe.

While unlikely a factor in this case, I wouldn't be so quick to trust National Geographic as it is a for-profit company owned by 21st Century Fox (of Fox News fame). Its credibility shouldn't be categorized on equal footing as Nature.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9296815/national-geographi...

It's important to note that the magazine is owned (partially) by Fox, but the National Geographic Society is still its own thing.

Unlike other questions, I'm interested in logistics behind this. How do you produce 20m mosquitos and where do you hold them? How do you transport them and how do you release them? How do you 'store' them and when releasing are most harmed, are they 'sprayed' or you 'open a box and they will go by themselves'? How do you decide where to release them? Is it all at once (1m per week) or is there a pattern, is it related to wind... so many questions!!

I wan't a documentary "How it's made: Mosquitocide". I'm willing to make one if someone can provide access to info and logistics.

Google, while you're at it, please find a way to eradicate ticks. They are getting more and more irritating and dangerous in Northern Europe!

Clothes moths are another which would be a good match for extinction.

I second that, as I tend to be in the forest a lot.

And even though I love nature, I am pretty sure, eco-cycles can do without ticks ...

They are really bad here in the Midwest US this summer (it's been consistently hot and wet). I have removed like 11 from the total of myself, my wife, my dog (accounts for 7 of the total, even on tick meds), and my son. Last year it was 2.

That is irritating, but ticks can pretty much end your life if you get rougher version of boreliosis or brain damaging infection (I forgot its name).

I think you're referring to Lyme disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease

Fortunately they seem to be all dog ticks around here, not the Lyme-disease carrying deer ticks:

http://www.tickencounter.org/tick_identification/dog_tick

However, that information only helps some people feel comforted when they find a tick on their person or in their home.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE)? Lyme also damages your nerve system, according to some newer schollary articles.

Yes that's the one.

Well at least vaccines exist against that one... It's recommended to get it in the South of Germany if you're at risk of having ticks. There are a few hundred cases every year.

Is that number attached or crawling? If attached, how many have you caught before they dug in? I live in the same area and that number would be really low. Stumble on some deer ticks and you'd be lucky if you only end up with 10x that number.

9 attached, 2 crawling. I don't stumble on many deer ticks, even though my dog and I put in some 30 miles a week running through the local singletrack parks!

There are even ticks now which will make you allergic to meat![1]

[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/tick-bite-meat-al...

In before PETA releases 20 million ticks to turn people vegetarian.

Don't give them any ideas!

I have had this exact thought.

Yes; my wife was one of the first documented cases of this. Even Mayo clinic could not figure out what was going on.

She was on death's door when we figured it out.

Wow, that's a terrible thing to have to go through. I'm so glad for you and your wife that things were figured out in time.

Or cars! As a pedestrian and cyclist I feel in danger every other day!

Also pedestrians and cyclists! As a motorcyclist I find myself dodging their random and unpredictable trajectories daily!

Also motorsyclist! I constantly see them driving in imaginary lanes and randomly going from 45 to 100 and back again, in swarms!

Ah yes those imaginary lanes called lines that motorcyclists use to make your commute time and traffic lower.

The lines delimit the lanes, they are not a lane. And my drive time is not lower if they die in the middle of the freeway, that slows things way down, and then I have to look at flowers at that spot for the next several years.

Your "sense" does not match with statistics. Allowing motorcycles to filter reduces traffic for everyone, full stop.

https://www.wired.com/2015/06/yes-california-let-motorcycles...

Letting small cars squeeze between 2 other small cars that happen to currently be on opposite sides of their adjacent lanes might help too. Ignoring speed limits, lights, signs; tailgating; ramming people off the road; all great ways to reduce traffic.

Hmm, I don't think the slippery slope argument works here. There is evidence to support motorcycle filtering works, there is not evidence to support small car filtering, ignoring lights, ignoring signs, tailgating, or ramming people off the road works.

There is evidence that removing speed limits works though, so not a total loss!

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-diseas...

> Although deer help spread ticks that carry Lyme, Dr. Esvelt explained to about two dozen residents at the meeting, the disease can also be controlled earlier in the tick’s food chain. Ticks typically contract the pathogen from white-footed mice, which they often feed on while still larvae, passing it on to humans and other mice when they bite again.

> Using new genome-engineering tools, he proposes to create mice that are immune to the Lyme-causing pathogen, or to a protein in the tick’s saliva, or both, to break the cycle of transmission.

In another approach, I have recently been exploring using a Permethrin treatment for clothing to avoid ticks - apparently in use by the US military, and able to survive several washing. No results to report yet, though.

https://www.google.com/search?q=permethrin+clothing+treatmen...

Yeah Permethrin works, I use it for my kids when they go camping.

I assume it's like everything - once too many use it, it will lose its effectiveness. But not yet!

Clove is an acaricide, so dilute some clove oil with jojoba or some other carrier oil and use that. I used clove and avocado oil to get rid of scabies (which are tiny arachnids). I also supplemented with coconut oil and diatomaceous earth.

It's becoming an incredibly widespread issue in the states as well.

"Verily, the life science’s arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has hatched a plan to release a ..."

My immediate reaction on reading that sentence was to wonder why they'd written it in some kind of Shakespearean English.

My next reaction was to feel stupid.

Is there a startup named Hwæt yet?

Can someone with knowledge of this particular experiment explain how they've overcome the regulations that have stopped Oxitec / Intrexon with their aedes aegypti solution? They key regulatory factors cited against Oxitec, especially in their Florida Keys trials in the past year, were centered around controlling for the release of only males (which do not bite humans), thus avoiding transmission of any kind from the genetically modified varieties, or bacterially modified varieties in this case.

Oxitec has worked for years to filter their mosquitoes so only ~0.2% of the released mosquitoes are female[1]. They then had to demonstrate that and more in many trials before being allowed to release their mosquitoes in the wild in Panama and Florida.

Otherwise, it's great that Google can overstep the other factors that would stop this solution like NIMBYism and working with county / municipal boards. These solutions are great.

[1]:http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/florida-voters-weigh-...

Interesting article. It's also loaded with a lot of "we're not sure", "we'll have to watch that closely", and "we don't believe it's a problem".

It's mostly because circuitous jurisdictional turf battles. The bacterial approach involves applying something to the mosquitos to kill them, rather than modifying the mosquitos, so it apparently counts as a pesticide, which puts it under EPA purview. Producing genetically modified animals is subject to FDA review instead. Apparently the EPA has a lighter touch, as the Wolbachia mosquitoes got approved by the EPA for use in the same area that was originally going to be the site of an Oxitec test in the Keys that got squashed by the FDA.

See https://phys.org/news/2017-04-florida-bacteria-infected-mosq...

It's interesting that Google is doing this rather than some government organization. What's Google's motivation? Is it purely altruistic, a PR move, an experiment, or does it have some direct benefit to them?

Maybe the mythical 20% time is back. Or they want Zika to stay out of their self-insurance pool. Googly Googs gonna goog.

20% time was never removed, it was always in place. (there was just some miscommunication about this I guess since people here keep saying it was removed)

And this is something done by Verily, not Google (even if it's an Alphabet company)

I'm aware that this is a known technique and thought has been given to whether or not it will impact the food chain, etc. But I do wonder this: has anyone considered what the effect will be of removing this constant source of stimulation for our immune systems?

Do normal (non-infected) mosquito bites do much for your immune system? I know it will have an effect (because every action has an effect) but will it even be noticeable?

Both good questions.

As mentioned in the article, this species only appeared in the area 4 years ago, so I doubt removing them would be an issue to our immune system.

True. But I feel like some of the rhetoric I see in these comments touches on the idea of eliminating all mosquitos.

Or the possible transference of non-harmful or beneficial bacteria?

Risk vs. Reward. Even if you could argue some benefit from the "immune system stimulation" straw man, I guarantee you the benefits from eliminating the vector for debilating and in some cases fatal diseases far, far outweigh the risks.

In large parts of the world mosquitoes can kill you through a variety of diseases. The Yellow Fever vaccine can kill you itself. A stimulated immune system isn't much good to a dead person, and mosquitoes certainly aren't the only opportunity nature offers in stimulating our immune system. I would be happy to see all the disease vector mosquitoes eliminated completely.

Just want to point out that a megacorp breeding and releasing a sterilization disease is pretty sci-fi. Also a mutation away from a Children of Men style dystopia.

"You don't understand. I didn't kill just one mosquito, or a hundred, or a thousand... I killed them all... all mosquito... everywhere."

Dresden Files reference. Excellent.

This is a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference, circa 1989! If the Dresden Files (circa 2000) used such a line, they were, in fact, making a reference. ;)

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Survivors_(episode)#M...

Oh, that explains why it's familiar. I might be mixing them up. There's a similar ... thing in DF. Trying not to spoiler.

Correct. That is one of my favorite STTNG episodes.

Reminds of when UC Riverside released some stingless wasps to prey on a whitefly infestation in Southern California. This was in the early 1990s.

I think this paper is relevant, but I only scanned it:

http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca5106p5-67707...

What kind of planning and permitting process does a project like this require?

Or would it be legal for me to just go and release a cloud of mosquitoes myself?

If you're a massive company that is importing a bunch of money all you have to do is make the right phonecalls

"hi, this is X calling on the behalf of $C_level_person at Google. $C_level_person would like to meet with you to discuss controlling the local mosquito population, no cost to the city, of course. Please call back when you have a chance."

A mid-level city administrator will probably call back.

Why is "Google" in the title? The only connection between Google and this company is that they share a parent company, Alphabet.

What an unfortunate headline.

It's done on purpose. This is what we call clickbait.

From what is explained so far, this process doesn't kill mosquitoes. It just makes sure that some of the females (that reproduce 5 times in a life of 2 weeks as an adult) get fertilized with unproductive eggs. http://www.denguevirusnet.com/life-cycle-of-aedes-aegypti.ht... The eggs of aedes aegypti can be spread anywhere and the fertile hatch whenever their area gets wet in the next year or so.

Does anyone know what % population reduction impact this process results in? They'd have males likely die after 2 weeks and that just wipes the reproductive chances of the females in that period. Google is treating for 20 weeks in dry weather, which is not exactly the peak reproductive season of this mosquito.

Has any research been done on potential benefits of widespread micro blood transfusion as a result of mosquitoes? The diseases are the obvious downside, wondering if resistances, etc may be an unrecognized upside.

First they came for the mosquitos, but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a mosquito. Next they came for the invasive fire ants and then we all cheered because mosquitos and fire ants were finally gone.

Does this prevent reproduction of the mosquitos, or of the disease? If mosquitos, will this have a negative impact on bats? My bats eat mosquitos and moths, but there are not many moths any more.

Mosquitoes, I think. These are an intrusive species, new to the area, so probably not a primary food source.

I wish the other mosquito killing efforts would go forward.

Which "other" efforts? Do you mean pesticides?

There has been a separate research effort to develop mosquitoes that are genetically modified rather than bacteria-infected, with similar objectives, that so far has been stymied in the US by a combination of stronger regulatory hurdles (since it's regulated by a different agency) and NIMBYism. Oxitec is the company spearheading that research. See, e.g., http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/20/50271725...

Where I live the KABS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Mosquito_Control_Associ...) is very effective at reducing mosquito populations: "At a cost of 400k€ annually the result is a reduction of the mosquito population by 99% compared to untreated areas", and 95% of total mosquitoes in the larger area. They use proteins produced by a bacterium (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) to kill the larvae. It's fantastic, their work improves quality of life significantly.

It's time to wipe harmful mosquito species out completely.

All good. Yet I thought that was a responsibility of the gov... A big corp spending millions for free seems, you know, questionable

Governments hire companies (contractors) to do work that is well outside the standard city services (well, sometimes they even hire companies to do the normal city services). This is just Google paying for a trial for the city. I'm sure they will later charge other cities so it looks like most hired contractors that a city uses.

Part of the question is if we should rely on a single company for so many different things. A company that’s controlled by only two people.

This is maybe not an issue today, but what happens once the founders die and their inheritors take over control? Children of founders tend to purely focus on profit, and such a focus might lead to a Google led in the way Comcast is led today.

And I don’t want to see a Google, Amazon, etc – likely even larger than now – with such leadership. Ideally we wouldn’t leave that much power to such a low number of people we can’t even elect.

Mosquito surpression is an ongoing effort. For now it is free, but it will transition to a subscription service at some point.

Similar project in Germany:

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/tigermuecken-in-deu...

However they use gamma rays to sterilize the mosquitoes instead of bacteria.

Does anyone know why the mosquitoes wouldn't evolve to be repulsed by others infected in this way?

Or is this a similar class of problem to antibiotics becoming useless over time?

I.e. it's useful to do now so let's cross that bridge if we come to it?

Or is there something else I don't understand about this?

I can't wait until the day we start releasing solar powered the mosquito-hunting drones.

I don't know about drones, but there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser .

For those of us who live in Fresno and are curious as to which neighborhoods are being targeted: Harlan Ranch and Fancher Creek. They say "communities outside of these areas will not be affected."

I wish they'd do it in Sacramento where most of the mosquitoes live.

This is some real breakthrough. I don't remember i have heard of anything like this before. Any amount of success with this solution will have a lot of consequences on other problems.

>> Verily’s male mosquitoes were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans

What they mean is; harmless in the short term and hopefully also harmless in the long term.

Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno... wearing small cameras and a projector that can display text advertisements

I always wondered, how do they count so many mosquitos? Is there a technique to determine that it's 20M?

I just love how people simply refuse to use the Alphabet name and keep calling it Google.

I've never been interested in biology. But this is so cool! :O

I'm curious how mosquitoes will evolve to beat this.

Hopefully by going extinct. Not all evolutionary challenges are solved by the organism before extinction.

What could possibly go wrong?

No one should have the right to play god with our biosphere.

Yes they should. Next you're going to try and tell us that we shouldn't utilise modern medicine and vaccinations?

Well you certainly don't have the right to make me use modern medicine or take vaccinations. Just as I don't have the right to spray herbicide on your lawn. Even if there are weeds.

could we have a less clickbaity title

So what’s the plan to get rid of them? Verily’s male mosquitos were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans but when they mate with and infect their female counterparts, it makes their eggs unable to produce offspring.

Thank goodness. We can't eliminate mosquitoes fast enough.

Wildlife will probably find other food sources, so bring on the weapons of mosquito destruction.

To supplement this, the article says: > This particular mosquito species entered the area in 2013.

Although the scientific consensus I usually read on the topic of eradicating mosquitoes is that it won't destabilize any ecosystem.

that we know of Natural systems are like huge codebases built by novices. That variable you are changing shouldn't cause the whole system to collapse, but... see cases like the Cane Toad in Australia.

I don't really care it does disrupt an ecosystem, because the total disruption will be reduced.

Humans suffering from horrible diseases disrupt much. Disease is one of several things that keep people in poverty. People dying is expensive and causes a reduction in skill and investment in trying to save those suffering. Then there is the emotional cost of death by disease. People in poverty do shortsighted things like clearcut jungles to grow food.

That previous argument totally ignores any value judgment. Values judgments like how I value humans more than ecosystems so shitty as to be disruptable by removing 1 parasitic species. Malaria is one of the single most dangerous things to humanity, ever. Killing mosquitoes deal with the problem. The amount of innovation, art and good works lost because of people who died to malaria is staggering. At modern rates it kill more than a million people per year. With that amount of lost effort not lost we could build hundreds of ecosystems.

> With that amount of lost effort not lost we could build hundreds of ecosystems.

That's...not really how ecosystems work.

I agree that the benefit to humanity is probably worth the consequences, especially if they're minor, as seems likely. We still need to learn as much about those consequences as possible, if only so we can prepare for them in advance. We aren't currently capable of wiping out all mosquitoes, so it's not like we're holding back a sure-fire treatment.

And it's pretty silly to assume that only unimportant ecosystems are vulnerable to the loss of a single family. You know how screwed we'd be if bees vanished? Mosquitoes are pollinators too. As it happens, they're not primary pollinators, so it's probably okay, but that's the kind of thing we need to know about.

You are aware that, like, humans are part of the ecosystems, right? That we depend on these ecosystems to keep working if we want to survive? We don't preserve bees (being the classic example) not "because ecosystems", but because without bees, far less pollination, without pollination no food, without food we starve to death.

In some ways we are, but unlike every other animal we can choose to destroy or create a new ecosystem. For an extreme example, how much do astronauts participate in any natural ecosystem, and what is the ecosystem of thousands of square miles of farmland.

With the effort of millions of people not dying and struggling we develop new farming tools and tech, produce more food on less land (as has been the trend for the past 50 years) and could plant 10s of millions of trees and reclaim lost jungles lost to subsistence farming.

> For an extreme example, how much do astronauts participate in any natural ecosystem

Well, what do you think how long astronauts on the ISS will survive if we stop all flights to the ISS?

> and what is the ecosystem of thousands of square miles of farmland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_biology ?

Overall, I don't really understand what you are trying to say?! That there is no damage we could possibly be doing to ecosystems that couldn't trivially be undone? That we don't really need any ecosystems, but could just trivially transition to completely artificial food production? That planting 10s of millions of trees will bring back extinct life forms that had yet-undiscovered secrets in them that we could have used to derive new materials or drugs?

It's a system with an incredible number of fail-safes. Only a massive change (say, a meteor, a super volcano, or, I dunno, pumping trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere) could cause the whole system to collapse.

Killing off one tiny piece of the puzzle (if that's even possible) won't do it. For all of the hang-wringing about "what about the bats|birds|frogs|fish who need mosquitoes to live" the evidence indicates mosquitoes are a small percentage of their food supply in all cases.

Humans have already disrupted ecosystems with climate change, which has caused a massive rise in mosquito populations in many regions. Malaria and Zika are now a threat in places where they weren't as recently as a few years ago. The disruption has been happening for decades and mosquitoes are the result.

So...I doubt we have the technology to actually eradicate mosquitoes, but if we did, any harm it would cause would be vastly outweighed by the good.

I'm in favor of wiping out mosquitoes, but I think people are generally more concerned about _disrupting_ the ecosystem; not outright collapse. You're right that it's unlikely wiping out any one particular species would collapse any ecosystem. But it can certainly cause dramatic shifts in ecosystems, which people generally don't want.

For example, we recently re-introduced wolves into Yellowstone park. It was done because previously we had wiped out the wolf population, and we're now trying to re-establish it (we did a lot of bad things to Yellowstone historically, but luckily we've spent the past decade or so rebuilding it. The bison are thriving again!).

But, for economic reasons, we used the wrong wolves; cheaper wolves (seriously). Well ... that hasn't gone well at all. They've started wiping out other species in the park, and now that the park is bereft of other large game, the wolves are going after the bison. The bison we _just_ re-established. Luckily the bison are very robust and difficult beasts to hunt, but that doesn't help the fact that the other species have been decimated.

Has the Yellowstone ecosystem collapsed? No. But it has changed; changed by introducing just one species. And the change is quite dramatic.

Oops.

So this technique is basically... DDoSing mosquitoes? I also like the codename Debug.

Van Helsing would have been better..

Not Van Helsting?

Unless this solution virtually slaughters every single mosquito wouldn't this technique only select out unfit mosquitos eventually leading to populations of mosquitos with genetic countermeasures to this method of eradication?

What could possibly go wrong?

At least they aren't attempting to go viral.

What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

What would go wrong (almost forced to) is inevitably the creation of mosquito populations resistant to this bacterium or bacteria that infect other hosts than those mosquitos.

Don't underestimate life.

>What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

Any perceived correlation between Zika outbreaks (like 2013 French Polynesia, 2015-2016 Brazil) and those modified mosquito releases (like 2010 French Polynesia, 2011-2014 Brazil) is probably just pure coincidence. Even more coincidental is that ~15 years ago the islands 300 km from Gabon were specifically identified as the best isolated places to test the modified mosquitoes and the 2007 Zika outbreak in Gabon, one of the first major outbreaks (another one was in the same 2007 half a world from Gabon - on remote island Yap :).

Could it not be that the correlation is that geographical regions with higher incidence of Aedes Aegypti would have higher likelihood of having Zika outbreaks and would also have local governments more inclined to pursue mosquito reduction efforts?

I came up with this idea last year! I didn't know someone was already building it.

Wait. Is there no regulation around this? Any company or individual can cook up whatever specimen they want and simply release it into the environment en masse?

Am I missing something?

Somewhere down the line this will makes a mockery of customs agricultural inspections when you can just download the plan for a foreign organism and materialize it in your neighborhood.

Agreed, the article handwaves away the legal aspects which imo is more interesting than the actual mosquito engineering in this case.

They are working with Fresno County [0]

[0] http://www.mosquitobuzz.net/

Ah. Thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

It would be very easy to re-introduce the mosquitoes back into the wild if their absence cause problems

From the WHO factsheet[1] on malaria:

> Nearly half of the world's population is at risk of malaria.

> In 2015, there were roughly 212 million malaria cases and an estimated 429 000 malaria deaths.

> Increased prevention and control measures have led to a 29% reduction in malaria mortality rates globally since 2010.

> Sub-Saharan Africa continues to carry a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2015, the region was home to 90% of malaria cases and 92% of malaria deaths.

If you lived in a mosquito/disease endemic region, would you still have the same first reaction?

[1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/

Disease from Mosquitoes pose such a large threat that even if this goes terribly it will still likely be a benefit.

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