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Comment by b_tterc_p | Hacker News Reader

There are reasonable concerns about using genetic modifications to kill things like mosquitos, but why don’t we use this tech against invasive species which we want to be absolutely removed from an ecosystem?

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It's due to the concerns that a genetically modified species may return to the native ecosystem and decimating their natural habitat.

It would be simple to solve that with a breeding population kept isolated. If the genetic modification wipes out the wild population, you reintroduce it.

For species that reproduce quickly, such as insects, this is reasonable.

That said the mosquito trick is that we can produce drones whose babies are also only drones with the same genetic malfunction. The number of drone-only mosquitoes expands exponentially until they are most of the males, then most of the population, and then in a couple of more generations, the population is wiped out for lack of females.

I'm not sure that this would work as well for a species that moves more slowly. Or whether we know how to do the trick for species other than mosquitoes.

Reintroduction takes time, time which those species that depend on it as prey (or are kept in check by it if it's a predator) will die out.

This is also balanced by the fact that as far as we know, most any mosquito can fill most of the same roles in the food chains. We're mostly concerned with wiping out the few species that feed on humans and our pets/livestock. We could eradicate two or three species which carry West Nile, Malaria, Zika, Chickungunya, and a few other really bad diseases of humans, dogs, cats, songbirds, horses, and cattle that are spread by mosquitoes. Other species would still lay eggs, hatch, and get eaten or reproduce normally without threat to us.

Also note that despite the technique being proven in the lab, and the fact that mosquitoes kill a half-million people per year, we have not yet pulled the trigger and done it. Exactly for fear of the potential ecological consequences.

That, too. Good point.

BTW, thanks for all your time on PerlMonks and here. I didn't even notice who I was replying to the first time.

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