This, on top of all the other mosquito-born diseases, may finally convince the authorities/ethical commitees/whoever has the decision power to use this CRISPR specie-killing scheme talked about some time ago. It's scary, but it's badly needed.
Because as sibling comment said, asking people not to get pregnant will never work, anytime anywhere in the world.
That cannot be allowed to be a thing. Mosquitoes fill an important niche in a great many ecologies. Any society capable of creating such a thing will surely be able to create a vaccine or treatment. That is where energies should be focused.
Eh, from another angle mosquito-killing gene editing (MKGE) is one of the least destructive ways humans can try to kill all mosquitoes.
Killing all mosquitoes isn't a new idea or one that we haven't tried putting into practice. For instance, take a look at satellite photos of Long Island sometime[0]. You see all those straight lines dug along the coasts? That's where we destroyed thousands of acres of marshes for the purpose of killing mosquitoes around New York.
We also led a pretty destructive campaign against them in the American south, as part of essentially eliminating malaria in the United States. Again, countless wetlands destroyed along with spraying some absurd amount of highly effective pesticides like DDT everywhere.
MKGE is like the most environmentally friendly way we've ever tried to kill all mosquitoes.
It sounds like scientists thought about it, decided that their niche would quickly be filled by other insects - "Life would continue as before — or even better":
Go to the north. Wait. Wait until the sky darkens and you are afraid to venture outside. Then say that mosquitoes don't matter. There is some evidence that they consume more caribou, by weight, than the wolves.
I went to grad school with a lot of ecologists (not an ecologist myself). I've seen countless presentations about anthropogenic threats to all kinds of ecosystems. I've never seen anything that included mosquitoes as anything but a disease vector, and I've heard numerous opinions saying that mosquitoes are the one class of animal whose absence would not be noticed by the ecosystem. To back that claim up, I have the micro-review in Nature that I linked above. You can find more sources by following the citation web from it.
Gene drives are certainly a powerful and dangerous technology. But if you want to argue against using a gene drive on mosquitoes from a scientific standpoint, you need to present scientific evidence.
> I've never seen anything that included mosquitoes as anything but a disease vector,
There are entire branches of ecology studying (among other things) the role of mosquitoes in ecosystems. Limnology for example.
> I've heard numerous opinions saying that mosquitoes are the one class of animal whose absence would not be noticed by the ecosystem
Define "numerous"
I can't understand how somebody could claim that nothing will occur if we wipe an entire "class" of animals comprising more than 3000 species and that are linked with almost all in freshwater ecosystems in its quadruple role of prey, predator, pollinisator and vector. Hundred of species of vertebrates of economic interest to man depend on them, probably.
The question is if "Mosquitoes fill an important niche in a great many ecologies".
The Nature article that ak217 linked to describes the north as the primary special case: "Taken all together, then, mosquitoes would be missed in the Arctic — but is the same true elsewhere?"
Otherwise, they don't seem to have a key niche, eg, as a food source for insect-eaters.
> Ultimately, there seem to be few things that mosquitoes do that other organisms can't do just as well — except perhaps for one. They are lethally efficient at sucking blood from one individual and mainlining it into another, providing an ideal route for the spread of pathogenic microbes.
It ends with a quote:
> "They don't occupy an unassailable niche in the environment," says entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Florida. "If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over."
Thus, the article argues that mosquitoes do not fill an important niche in a great many ecologies, though they definitely fill an important niche in the arctic.
> Many species of insect, spider, salamander, lizard and frog would also lose a primary food source. In one study published last month, researchers tracked insect-eating house martins at a park in Camargue, France, after the area was sprayed with a microbial mosquito-control agent1. They found that the birds produced on average two chicks per nest after spraying, compared with three for birds at control sites.
> Most mosquito-eating birds would probably switch to other insects that, post-mosquitoes, might emerge in large numbers to take their place. Other insectivores might not miss them at all: bats feed mostly on moths, and less than 2% of their gut content is mosquitoes. "If you're expending energy," says medical entomologist Janet McAllister of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado, "are you going to eat the 22-ounce filet-mignon moth or the 6-ounce hamburger mosquito?"
> With many options on the menu, it seems that most insect-eaters would not go hungry in a mosquito-free world. There is not enough evidence of ecosystem disruption here to give the eradicators pause for thought.
I don't believe they do, because the death rates just aren't that high. Population-limiting factors for Humans have historically been mostly food supply and childhood diseases. I've heard that Malaria wasn't so much of a problem until people where driven into malaria-infested areas due to population growth.
Today the population limiting factor for Humans seems to be women's education. No kidding, this seems to be the number one factor in birth-rates. The more education women are getting the less babies are born. And I am generally in favor of both, more education and less procreation.
