Also, the fact humans have destroyed a lot of biodiversity already is no excuse to do so in the future.
I’m not super comfortable with the unknown risks related to GM insects but having seen the impact of dengue first hand I hope this proves successful at limiting the insect population in urban areas.
Pandemics could be argued to be a biological control on population, but I think mosquitos would be of more naturally-recurring consequence that make it a "normal" form of population control.
Would you say the same about diseases and pandemics?
There are plenty of things humans do that sound suspiciously like "fucking with the firmware too much", but I don't think many would argue that eradicating polio or fighting cancer or HIV are bad things. And even the "side effects" excuse would apply here too, because letting those people pass on their genes to their offspring potentially interrupts the "natural ecosystem" and introduces weak links into the gene pool.
But there are plenty of good reasons for why this line of thought would not gather much sympathy or consideration these days.
For sure. Anything that we chip away in population control will end up having effects elsewhere in the ecosystem. I don't understand how that's a controversial statement. That doesn't mean we shouldn't but it also doesn't mean eradicating things like mosquitos is a good idea either. The same arguments have been given time and again when talking about genetically modified species of insects and animals; the variables of change are too high to predict how it will affect the world around us.
Imagine if all animals and all humans only died of old age from the dawn of time until now. Would Earth be able to sustain itself? I think not. Maybe biology has changed since I've taken it, but these things are considered pieces that are a larger part of homeostasis for ecosystems.
The last part of your statement is just generally confusing.
It's pretty hard for it not to be us when you look at livestock numbers. We slaughter 10s of billions of animals _yearly_ in the name of food.
Believe it or not, the balance of nature depends on them. What would dragon flies eat? What would endangered birds that eat dragonflies eat?
Some animal populations are _only_ constrained by their food supply and disease vectors in the environment. For instance, local deer populations, where human's have eradicated their predators, quickly spiral out of control unless hunting permits can be issued in number to keep the populations in check.
Eradication isn't a good goal, but perhaps rebalancing is and removing those that spread deadly cross-species diseases.
What are the risks of eradicating mosquitoes?
As you noticed, there are no keystone species in mosquitoes. No ecosystem depends on any mosquito to the point that it would collapse if they were to disappear. An exception may be the Arctic, but the species there are non-vectors and thus can be left alone.
Aedes aegypti are an invasive species in most of the world. It's a pure win to eradicate them, they have zero benefits to the ecosystem.
As others have stated however, mosquitoes have been studied to not have a significant impact if they were to go extinct.
Can you back these numbers up?
Good luck with your pet issue I guess.
This is only against Aedes aegypti that is responsible for most of the transmissions and is not a native specie of Florida.
If anything, wiping them out should push the local ecosystem back toward its normal state, as the native species of mosquito (of which there are many) would face less competition from the invasive Aedes aegypti.
I'm not going to ask you to prove a negative, but it sure sounds like it's going against all the advice I've heard about ecology.
Namely that ecosystems are far more complex than we understand and that even small changes can compound into larger changes. Basically: don't play God.
If this is safe and it does work, then it might be helpful to have some new messaging about when and where we can start actively designing ecosystems.
"Don't mess with mother nature" is easy to understand. So, how would you create a new maxim that preserve that general rules but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?
(Un)fortunately, we already are God. We already mess with Mother Nature. Our continued existence has impacts so complex that those impacts cannot be modulated solely in degree, because changing degree causes a cascade of effects that makes it a change in type.
It is unpredictable, not because it is natural, not because it is sacred or some other special case, but because of the number of parts. And in spite of that lack of clarity, we are inescapably responsible for making choices that will steer the ecosystem. As Sartre wrote,
> In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.
There is no surety that non-intervention will lead to outcomes that are better by any measure, whether that measure is long-term stability, convenience for humans, or nearly any other you might choose. Left alone, nature can only select the traits that made the last generation breed the most. None of that is proof against the future. For every species alive today, many others are dead, exactly because nature was not messed with. Nature does not share humanity's moral attachment to conservationism.
I suspect the truth is that in both cases it comes down to who is going to benefit - with it more likely to happen if the "who" is either a large number or a small number with a lot of influence and the "benefit" is something that's immediately apparent to the winners and not immediately apparent to the people who lose in the intervention.
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand.
We have also introduced some species that haven't really created problems.
We have also created new habitats (cities) where some species are quite problematic. If we could get rid of cockroaches and bed-bugs, life would certainly become better.
Mother nature does not have your best interests at heart, and decisions that affect the lives of millions should not be made based off short maxims.
Anytime you jump from the lab to the real world it's going to be different. And each ecosystem in the country and state will be slightly different.
> if anything unexpected happens we can stop the process and reintroduce the species
Has this been done before with insects though? This sounds a lot harder than reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone that are small enough in number that they can be monitored.
Rabbits were introduced to Australia to get rid of other pests.
Then myxomatosis was engineered circa 1950 to get rid of rabbits. It killed 95% of them in 5 years. The 5% reproduced and now all rabbits in Australia have myxomatosis.
The researcher wanted to get rid of rabbits in his garden in UK. He brought myxomatosis back and 95% UK rabbits were killed in 2 years. The 5% regrew and all UK rabbits are myxo-resistant.
It spread to France. But I guess, by now, you know the story ;) Hence the story of the red-eyed rabbits.
I was quite surprised that people here chose to downvote my comment, apparently not knowing what it referenced.