Scientists discover how mosquitoes can ‘sniff out’ humans
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
What I recall is:
* some species of mosquitos are an important part of ecosystems, e.g. a big chunk of biomass in tundra regions. (I didn't even know there were any mosquitos there!)
* but the specific species that carry malaria: no. They gave some general platitudes about niches and every species being important... Almost. These ones, kill them all. The important stuff these mosquitos do can be done by other insects.
Edit: https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a looks pretty similar to what I read. Either this one is slightly more nuanced or my memory dropped some of the nuance.
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/19/467395225/mosquitoes-what-are...
Source: I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and I have been swarmed by mosquitoes on several occasions. Mosquitoes were particularly bad in Yosemite in late June and Washington in early August; mosquitoes are finally letting up now that theses processes are taking place. Let me just say mosquitoes make the most of that interval before predators dominate.
They might not be the only thing that can do the job, but it’s an important job.
This reminds me of my favorite term from any college course: “charismatic megafauna.”
If we could selectively just eliminate those 2-3 sub-species that transfer malaria, dengue and say zika or yellow fever from human perspective the negative impact on environment compared to positive impact on often weakest and poorest part of mankind if... well incomparable. Ecosystem would take a hit but I can't seriously put half a million of human lives yearly, often small children, against some blip in our environment, which would in few years balance itself out into new equilibrium (probably with more insect of some other type taking the place) and choose insects.
What I would eliminate outright without any remorse are ticks. They are not that important in food chain, and are scourge for both humans and many animals.
Now if we could selectively just eliminate those 2-3 sub-species of bean counters responsible for this sort of decision...
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/lyme-vaccine-history-ly...
Isn't pushing back on animals, in particular apex predator types, "good" in some natural sense. Making areas uninhabitable (except I assume for species that have evolved, or will evolve, some kind of symbiosis) seems like an important role. Any lifeform that gets an open field will just grow until they run out of food or invite disease or whatever. Unfavorable parasites or whatever you want to call them are an important part of the balance, even if they are clearly bad from the perspective of whoever they're feeding on.
Humans have quite a few bad points here as well.
What is good about humans or dogs or trees? What does good even mean- how do you define it? Good in what sense?
trees: that's the symbol of life, of usefulness, they help to improve life in the ground and around, hold humidity, store carbon for most of them, are homes of many species, provide food, ...
dogs or any pets: not useful at all for the ecosystem, actually detrimental from their food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#Impact and other services dedicated to them and their direct negative impact on the local wild life
mosquitoes: useful because their larva feed a large ecosystem, they also feed other insects, they also pollinate
Would a toddler at the zoo and a polar resident have differing opinions?
But I'm sure most people will say they're bad because of the risk of a bite, neglicting and/or ignoring how they indirectly help us to live
Plus it’s ironic to talk about wasps being good pollinators when they attack bees and other pollinators.
... but their role as predators of caterpillars is more interesting for us
Steady on there with the arrogance mate. At no point did I say all wasps should die or that their environmental impact was precisely zero.
https://www.thoughtco.com/insect-pollinators-that-arent-bees...
Dogs and trees make us happy. It’s amazing to go for a walk in the forest and breathe the fresh air. The smells of the forest are very pleasant and calming. Unfortunately, forests also tend to have mosquitoes everywhere due to the way shade preserves pools of standing water. Forests would be much more enjoyable to walk through without mosquitoes biting us all the time.
It’s as simple as that, really. We’re allowed to be biased. All other animals are biased. Foxes will kill every single chicken in a henhouse. The difference with us humans is that we can plan for the future in a sophisticated way. That’s why we build the henhouse rather than kill all the chickens immediately.
The rest of the job is just ecological study. If we can determine that the eradication of mosquitoes won’t cause the food chain to collapse and lead to widespread unintended problems, why not do it?
What is good from an ecological perspective? It’s what we humans prefer. Not just in the immediate term but in the long term. We know we like idyllic forests and meadows full of butterflies and reefs teaming with colourful fish. We don’t much like swamps teaming with mosquitoes and other biting insects but we recognize their value as habits for things we do like, mainly waterfowl. So if we can determine whether it’s safe to get rid of mosquitoes without disrupting the other things we do like, why not? After all, we created seedless bananas, grapes, and watermelons.
This is a pretty sweeping claim that requires some motivation.
We are talking about removing the main wire of entire ecosystems without a clue of the real outcome. Could have some benefits? yes, it could, but the nice extra space for the feet wouldn't worth the danger. An unfixable waterfall of problems and many local economical collapses would be guaranteed.
The "unfixable waterfall of problems and many local economic collapses" that have resulted since then are legendary /s
Not necessarily; that would be suicidal. And take in mind that you are perfectly describing humans (and dogs)
But mosquitoes blow the rest of these out of the water with staggering numbers of human deaths on their hands.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to...
And I say that as someone that would have died the first day on this earth without modern medicine.
On the other hand there is a good chance we master genetic modification to such a level we could just manually fix our genes.
Would you want to revise your opinion?
"The Mosquito Conundrum" from Series 17 of The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry
Hahaha, like I'm going to check what gender the mosquitoes are that are buzzing around my head and waking me up at the middle of the night.
a Lot of animals would lose momentum for conservation if we didn't have a united enemy.
...on TV, and videogames.
Lets return to the real world. Can you name one terrestrial ecosystem that works currently without any Diptera?.
Is there anything good about human beings? Have they done anything that is good for rest of the planet?
What is good of human? To be bitten by mosquito. What is good of mosquito? To be bitten by fish (according to another comment below). What is good of fish? To be bitten by human. (Of course, this is overly the simplification, but I hope to explain the point that I am trying to make.)
If nothing in life is valuable, including life itself, what gives? Do you still value less suffering over more suffering? Am I misunderstanding your perspective?
I do not quite understand your comment, but Wikipedia says: "Nihilism [...] is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. Different nihilist positions hold variously that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities do not exist or are meaningless or pointless."
I do not seem to be of this view. I do not reject objective truth, etc, but I am of the opinion that the Absolute is inexpressible. (Therefore, effectively anything you will communicate (including these comments that I am writing) will be a simplification; if it was Absolutely everything, then you would not write nor even know all of it.)
Life is not meaningless, and truth, knowledge, morality, etc, is not meaningless, but its meaning/existence is related to everything else meaning/existence, or else it is nothing at all.
Within certain systems, you will have certain consequences of them, which are meaningful within them, by their relations (which are inevitable, and cannot be avoided), and in a larger system comprising them, or a smaller one, will be likewise correspondent.
(For example, any statement valid in intuitionistic logic is also valid in classical logic, although really since they are two different things, you must define how to convert them (which, in this case, you can merely use the same symbols and it will work, but that is because it is the convention to use the same ones and it will work, because they correspond to each other in such a way, that it will work). If you add/multiply natural numbers, the same corresponding result is as though you are adding/multiplying integers, reals, or finite discrete categories.)
(Other example is computer programs, too; they are also relation by the other programs in the computer and by the hardware I/O and software I/O, too. Without I/O (or if the program is not executed, or at least the source code read by someone who has printed it out), then the I/O of the program on the computer is not meaningful in relation to the umbworld, even though the program may be meaningful in relation to itself.)
(And, likewise, also living things; which also consists of biology which consists of chemistry which consists of physics which consists of mathematics, too.)
(And, yet, these things (numbers, living things, biology, chemistry, etc) are not even real "things" but only one way to define them in relation to the other things; it is the relations between things which are more "real" than the things themself, which are merely one way to define them. For example, a ball on a table is a ball but it is also many atoms. If you break the ball with a hammer then the atoms are not broken even though the ball is broken.)
> If nothing in life is valuable, including life itself, what gives?
Life is valuable. Things (whether this "things" is the world, or the life or some parts of the life, or numbers (or other mathematical objects), or even if it is the parts of the laws of physics) do not work in isolation, though. A life, whether they are human or fish or insects or trees (etc), is not a bad and a worthless thing, even though they affect each other.
Something might be good for one thing and bad for another thing (however you consider a "thing", whether you ignore the passage of time (or, alternatively, spacetime) or not), but it is to be avoided if it is bad in general.
Any life will have both help and harm (and, both at the same time, since it is not as simple as it seems); that is life. If any animal will eat a animal/plant that will harm that animal/plant, or if you defend yourself then this might harm whoever you defend yourself against, or sometimes the harm is caused by accident (in which case, hopefully is possibility to learn), but that means that creature is harmed (or that you are harmed). Each one, each part, is inevitably harm/help.
(If they are not affecting each other like that then nothing is ever worth anything at all. But, everythings is affecting each other in this universe, so it is worth everything, after all. This is true in biology as well as in mathematics (including platonic mathematics), physics, theology, etc. If a mathematical object somehow has no properties, theorems, relation to other mathematical objects, addition/multiplication with other numbers, etc, then it would be bad and worthless, but of course mathematical objects do have properties, theorems, etc.)
Anyone should try to avoid harm (although you (and the others animals) must eat/defense), and you should avoid to harm the world/life/environment; it should not be only beneficial to humans, or only beneficial to you, but it should be non-harmful to the world (including humans, trees, mosquitoes, and other animals/plants), to the degree that it can be achieved. (Likewise, in addition to not beinly only beneficial to humans, it also should not be only harmful to humans, either. If you say that human is good and others is bad, then that is no good, but other way around is also no good, either.)
You may try to defend yourself if a mosquito try to bite you, if you want to do; but you should not try to eliminate mosquitoes; they are right to live in this world too, as are humans, trees, etc.
> Do you still value less suffering over more suffering?
Yes, but you cannot take "less suffering" and "more suffering" in isolation, nor should it be limited to humans, or to animals that experience pain, or to animals in general, etc.
> Am I misunderstanding your perspective?
Probably, and probably it is because I am not communicating it clearly enough.
Please read my other comment (32535273) for some more things that I had written about the topic that I was replying to, though.
You must have right to defend yourself (from humans and from nonhumans), and mosquitoes and other animal also must have the right to defend themself (from humans and from nonhumans). However, this is not to be done by eliminating populations, or by starting by attacking all of the animals/plants.
Animal also might attack other animal/plants for food also will be needed though, including human and nonhuman. (And then, if there is an attack then also will be the defense.)
Humans should stop damaging the environment/world (including the parts of the environment/world which are harmful to humans). Many human hopefully should be having less children too, in order to reduce future population; that is better than committing suicide or by having a war. (While, some other animal (and possibly some plants too, but not human (at this time)) are endangered species and might need to have more children.)
This idea seems ingenious, especially the part about using seltzer water for the CO2 (which will last 3-4 hours).
Thanks for sharing!
_An Immense World_ by Ed Yong, who wrote a lot of the great early Covid articles for The Atlantic.
Here's a study from 2014, linked in the paper, where they edited out the ability to sense CO2; the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes could still home in on people: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00155-X
Most mosquito capture devices are just CO2 + heat; some are CO2 + heat + odor. I haven't seen one so far that just combines heat + odor, although maybe there's something out there.
Different species of mosquito are attracted to different chemicals, which helps explain why some people get targeted a lot and others not so much. Here's a random fact I just learned from another of the linked studies: Ae. aegypti are attracted to ammonia. I guess the variability helps complicate making a general-purpose machine that will work anywhere.
Also, some species prefer humans over other animals... I think they can still get confused, though. For instance, when I'm hanging out with my black cat, the mosquitoes all gravitate to him. The study suggests that mosquito sensory cues diminish with distance (duh, I guess), but perhaps some cues become predominant as the mosquitoes get closer. I've wondered if wearing patches of black fur on my forearms might help attract them to a specific location; haven't found any product that does that, either.
One more random observation from the study: they're using a pretty neat little membrane feeder full of blood to test the mosquitoes. I'd heard of past studies where human lab assistants just stuck in an arm to be fed on. I guess it's lucky for the assistants that they've advanced past that, but I'd also read that they acclimate fairly quickly. I wonder: would anyone be up for intentionally exposing themselves like that? I've been getting bitten by the same species for a year and still have skin reactions; personally, I think if someone offered me a few days of suffering to gain a resistance, I'd go for it!
I’ve been running this experiment for about 2 decades now, involuntarily, and my conclusion is no.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but burning propane indoors is allowed for cooking and heating... although there's venting requirements and venting probably includes the CO2, so maybe not useful.
I use outdoor mosquito devices that have UV + a sticky tape with odor (supposedly, I don't smell it and can't confirm). I don't know how effective they are vs other things, but they do capture a lot of flying creatures anyway.
Most of those "mosquito" capture devices that use UV are very effective at killing everything else except for mosquitoes. Including a lot of stuff that probably shouldn't be killed.
If I am on table with 10 people and there are 2 mosquitoes, both of them will come and try repeatedly bite me. They will not go near the other 9 humans whatsoever (sniff them out).
-Bram Stoker, or someone.
It stands to reason that different people put out different amounts of the various things that attract mosquitoes.
So in my own experience light does seem to be a factor somehow
Out of curiosity, what are you doing with the light off? Just sitting in the dark?
But there's a lot of street light as I live in a big city, so I can do with that (it's fine as long as it's brighter outside). I also have some xiaomi battery-powered motion-activated night lights to move around. My screens and TV are adjusted to low brightness and dark mode through automation. It works out ok for me.
I can basically do my normal activities with some exceptions. For example my Oculus quest tracking doesn't work. But I don't want to wear that in the summer heat anyway.
I don't think it's heat as I only have LED lights. Also, mosquitoes are far from the only troublesome bugs here. But keeping the lights off really seems to help for them too.
Over time, you can develop a tolerance to the bites. I definitely had this happen while living in SE Asia for 4 years... when I first moved to Vietnam, I had bites all over, after a while, I stopped reacting to the bites almost entirely.
Could an increase in ambient CO2 mess with the mosquito's ability to locate us?
What I found helps is a fan blowing on you to disrupt the pockets of CO2 pooling around you as you breathe in your sleep.
There are traps that attract with co2 and smells and heat. They do attract but they don’t always win the taste test of which is more attractive vs a person.
I've never noticed mosquitoes to be very light-shy.