Hacker News Reader

Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Despite this failure, I still think the species should be targeted for extinction. What are our options?

As mentioned, we can spread dragonflies, a beneficial insect that eats many mosquitoes a day both in larval form and in the air.

Dragonflies are also an important prey item for birds and bats, both of which have decreased in numbers in recent years and would benefit from more food sources.

We can restore some of our wetlands, where dragonflies breed, and try to eliminate standing water in urban areas as much as possible -- old tires, ditches, etc. Mosquitoes love wetlands too, but in a properly balanced system, their populations would be controlled by fish, dragonflies, and amphibians.

We should also continue research into gene drives and similar efforts to reproductively target a species for extinction.

At the same time, we should be careful not to damage the thousands of non-biting mosquitoes which are valuable pollinators. About 5000 known species exist of which only about 100 feed on blood, and about 9 of those blood sucking species carry deadly diseases. If we target just the blood sucking species while not affecting the others, the effects on the ecosystem should be minimal.

Mosquitoes are a remarkably effective and robust creature, dating back 100 million years, and existing in nearly every part of the world. They bring great misery to many species of animals and their extinction will not be mourned.

Dragonflies are not picky predators. Their larvae are essentially miniature murder machines that happily devour fish and amphibians along with other insects until they undergo metamorphosis, and they continue the process as adults. I would be very wary about introducing them anywhere they didn't already exist.

Agreed; fortunately, dragonflies are pretty much found all over the world, so shouldn't be a major change to introduce them in an area where they've become scarce.

I really want to ship some software tomorrow morning to all of my clients, but it might have critical bugs that corrupt their existing data. What are my options in that scenario?

The best option if you really want to wipe out mosquitoes is to invest the actual time and resources required into proving that mosquitoes can be targeted precisely, and that there won't be knock-on effects.

People get angry about that answer because that's not fast or convenient, and in the meantime people are dying of malaria. And I really do understand that, but there is no fast, easy, safe way to eliminate a species. Every possible solution takes time. I'm sure my boss gets upset too whenever I tell them that the new database upgrade needs to go through QA again.

The short answer is if you want to help people with malaria today and not just theoretically help them in the future, you should invest in building out Africa's infrastructure and increasing medical access and standards of living for the people who live there. That's also a pretty difficult task, but it may end up being faster, safer, and easier than eliminating mosquitoes.

Do this again, but this time with a better selection of genes? The outcome isn't a refutation of the approach, only of the particular gene drive. No reason why we can't do better next time.

I hope they see it your way. They apparently used males from another species of mosquito. The females selectively chose against them. They should use the local species in another trial.

I think the main thing it pointed out was to locally source the specimens to avoid any accidental hybrid vigor if they managed to mutate out to something viable.

Of course the outcome as is proves that males seem to make a poor long term solution since healthy ones can one to many enough to largely recover. It could theoretically weaken their genepool into nonviability if done persistently enough that the only mutant defective and inbred will survive but that would probably take a long time to converge to extinction.

Self limiting is needed.

And presumably all the birds will have plenty of other things to eat, right?

There is no species of bird for which mosquitos are particularly important to their diet.

Even if the number of certain birds or bats were somewhat reduced, I'd accept that tradeoff.

Yup. There are plenty of other species of mosquito to eat. Eradicating one or a dozen species of mosquito will not lower the number of mosquitoes.

Aedes aegypti is not native to Brazil. Aedes aegypti propagates dengue, zika, chikungunya and yellow fever and is a big problem in Brazil. It kills people (and other animals). Just this year, 600 people died from Dengue alone in Brazil, and almost 2 million of people infected with it, and is not even spring-summer yet, which is where is the big problem....

None. Anything we have would have worked on the original problem if deployed.

that response doesn't mean anything. are you missing some words?

I think they wanted to write "Nothing" instead of "Anything".

Eliminate their food sources. Unfortunately that would mean the extinction of any and every soft skinned blood carrying on the planet.

Is an extreme solution but definitely would work and valuable because can suggest a partial solution to reduce risk levels. Put a pool of water into a building dome in the middle of sahara and play and experiment with them all that you want. Land is cheap and your critters will remain in the area and can't go away. But in Brazil... come on... do it in some desert at least.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com