Considering all the damage we do to eco systems and how little concern many governments have for the environment how come we are so concerned about potential consequences of fighting mosquitoes with genetically modified bacteria and similiar strategies?
Only a few species are dangerous to humans and none of them are keystone species in their ecosystems so why not just erradicate them?
In: Biology
1. We, as a humanity, do try to fight back. Many scientists work on it right now.
2. Most of the mosquito problems concern very poor environments and they don’t have enough money to bring the big guns.
3. You don’t know how much you would affect the whole nature if you released genetically modified anything at this scale.
Something eats mosquitoes and if you killed off all the mosquitoes that something might die off. Then if that something died off, whatever eats it might die off. You have to be careful of unintended consequences when altering nature on a large scale.
There are so many eradication efforts of so many flavors. Everyone I know in AK has a cough because those areas are sprayed with pesticides constantly. More sophisticated efforts like viruses meet up against evolution and haven’t yet been able to sustainably penetrate a population (i.e. everyone we infect dies or doesn’t reproduce, so those that were resistant now take over the next generation). Nevertheless, eradicating any common species is likely to have unintended consequences. Mosquitoes are a major food source for a lot of creators, for example.
We are doing.
There are quite a few programs focused on releasing sterile male mosquitoes to reduce their population and control the spread of diseases. You can read about how it’s done here: https://www.cdc.gov/mosquitoes/mosquito-control/irradiated-mosquitoes.html#:~:text=Male%20mosquitoes%20are%20bred%20and,dengue%2C%20Zika%2C%20and%20chikungunya.
the TD:DR is that you irradiate the males using the same radiation we use in X-rays. You then release those mosquitoes, since males don’t bite you can release as many as you want, who mate and cause the females to lay unfertilised eggs, reducing the number of mosquitoes in the area.
But, we can’t eridicate them, because it’s just too expensive to do so and extremely difficult. Much easier to focusing on keeping their numbers low in response to disease outbreaks than it is to try and eliminate them. Plus, while they’re not lynch pins of their ecosystems, they are still a food source for many other animals.
mosquitos are often important food species in their environment, especially in the larval stage. Anything done to kill them off will have a disproportionate effect in killing off their predators also, often making the problem worse, not better.
This has been tried and that is the effect it usually has. Most predators of mosquito larvae eat huge numbers of them, concentrating any poisons the mosquitos survive in the bodies of the predators.
Birds, bats, and fish all eat mosquitos and their larvae by the billions.
Of course, the most workable solution is to take action to encourage the survival of the predators, and let them get rid of the mostquitos for us.
[brittanica](https://www.britannica.com/story/what-purposes-do-mosquitoes-serve-in-ecosystems)
Only 6 percent of mosquito species even bite humans, so the argument that we would be hurting the ecosystems they live in is not a given. There are several programs in place to try to do this but other groups are concerned that it will affect other species too much. Some of this is explained by the fact that most deaths from mosquitoes are in poor countries. I know when Zika or West Nile is discovered in the US, it makes the news.
Because the people who care about the environment are also the people who care to address mosquito-related problems.
Also,
>[While they can seem pointless and purely irritating to us humans, mosquitoes do play a substantial role in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes form an important source of biomass in the food chain—serving as food for fish as larvae and for birds, bats and frogs as adult flies—and some species are important pollinators.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/mosquitos-exist-elephants-donkeys-used-represent-gop-democrats-180973517/)
Or to put it another way,mosquitoes keep nutrients in circulation. When a mosquito sucks plant juice or mammal blood and then gets eaten by a fish or a frog or a spider,that fish or frog or spider is “eating” that plant or mammal without actually needing to attack or digest the preceding organism.
No mosquitoes means their predators take a hit too.
Circling back to the first point,once you release a bioweapon (like a bacteria),there’s no guarantee you can put a lid on it again. Deploying anything that can spread and mutate on its own is a risk with potential knock on effects for the environment.
Everything in the environment has a part to play,or else it wouldn’t be there. An individual or population might be there in the wrong place at the wrong time and need culling,but to eradicate an entire species from the earth is short sighted.
Annoying as it is, there’s a difference in many minds between “careless destruction” and “intentional annihilation campaign”.
And of course, it’s costly. And the fuckers are hard to eliminate.
How many more extinctions do we need to cause before we accept we share this planet with other creatures?
Most posts already talk about upsetting the balance of species that rely on mosquitoes as a food source, but also — mosquitoes are also pollinators which is hugely consequential for plant life. There’s a really interesting podcast episode on mosquitoes and they discuss disease control. [Ologies podcast: Mosquitoes](https://www.alieward.com/ologies/culicidology)
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