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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

How is the Earth not entirely made out of Mosquitoes then? What are the things that currently limit their growth, maybe it would be good to find out and use those?

Also I’ve been reading up on how Gene Drives work, it’s very interesting but I’ll just leave the Wikipedia page here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive

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Female mosquitos need blood meals to produce eggs, and a place to lay those eggs which is safe from predation. Both steps can be somewhat controlled by preventing bites onto humans, and by removing standing water, but you will never prevent mosquitos from biting wild mammals or pets, nor will you ever get all of the standing water sources (one old tire could spawn thousands of mosquitos).

One of the biggest limits is weather and climate. Mosquitos don't exist here in New England for half the year, but if we increase the temperature by 2 C, we'll probably be facing them for 7-8 months and they'll rebound harder and faster.

Food. Mosquitoes need blood to reproduce (among other things) and there's a finite supply of that. This caps the population. A very rapid reproduction rate means that they can quickly go from any population size to the max capacity of the environment they are in.

A lot of things eat mosquitoes. A lot. Fish, other insects, birds, bats, other mammals. They eat ridiculous amounts of mosquitoes. A single bat alone can eat its bodyweight in mosquitoes every day.

> How is the Earth not entirely made out of Mosquitoes then?

Mosquitoes are a key species, that feed in turn thousands of other animals: fishes, spiders, predatory flies, bugs, bats, frogs, birds, shrews... etc and suffer heavy loses by that. And they are also pollinators. Mosquitoes are connected with everything and will support everything.

So messing with them is notoriously dangerous. Playing football with a nuclear bomb would be safer probably.

> What are the things that currently limit their growth, maybe it would be good to find out and use those?

Loss of habitat, for example.

> What are the things that currently limit their growth, maybe it would be good to find out and use those?

Now I'm getting worried that some ancient space-ring turns up

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_Array

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