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A Purdue researcher and a team of scientists working on a new insecticide argue that mosquitoes should not simply be made extinct due to their role in various ecosystems. Catherine Hill, a professor of entomology, and her team are developing an insecticide that will suppress mosquitoes' ability to transmit diseases without killing the insect or interfering with other life forms. The team is based in Discovery Park, a research park dedicated to using interdisciplinary teams to solve global problems. Hill's research was one of the winners of Discovery Park's Big Idea Challenge, a program that provides resources to interdisciplinary teams with innovative research.
"For the last 20 years I've been trying to figure out how to kill mosquitoes, and then I had this epiphany where, morally, I'm just not OK with it anymore," she said.
There has been a lack of research in preserving mosquitoes because researchers have looked mostly at ways to eradicate them. Therefore, Hill thinks it is essential to consider all the possible effects of wiping out an organism that has existed for thousands of years. She points out that mosquitoes have co-evolved with many species, so there are likely other organisms that depend on them as a food source.
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-mosquitoes.html
[Source]: Why mosquitoes should not be eliminated
I was reminded of:
Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room. - Christine Todd Whitman
Should there be a "Save the Mosquito" movement?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zinho on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:08PM (4 children)
I beg to differ.
"Depend" implies that they have no other viable option, that without mosquitoes they would die out. This is not the case, all freshwater fish have other food choices besides the larvae of biting insects.
Those same plants are also pollinated by other insects, and do not depend on mosquitoes for survival.
Also not the case; both bats and birds have significant other sources of food (e.g. moths and other insects).
This is pure conjecture. It is much more likely that the world will be nearly identical, just less annoying.
Let's move on to the real kicker, though:
This is patently false. If we were effective at controlling mosquito populations then cities like Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Dallas would not need to repeatedly post warnings for their citizens to apply bug repellent in order to avoid West Nile and Zika viruses. The United States does not have Malaria epidemics killing thousands annually, but mosquito populations are simply being reduced, not controlled effectively.
Biologists in general are reluctant to recommend eradication of a species or any reason, and despite this the party line among them is that we really don't need mosquitoes. I'm not sure what caused the sudden case of conscience in this researcher, but he's living his career backwards - most people going into biology have to be convinced to shift in the other direction.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by driven on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:21AM (3 children)
Your rebuttal is also pure conjecture. I'll add my own and say that it would be much more surprising if removing a major food source from the food chain left things "nearly identical". A single brown bat can eat 1000 mosquitoes an hour [batrescue.org].
Who cares about brown bats? How about owls, snakes, raccoons, etc. that eat the brown bat. You can quickly see there are knock-on effects to disrupting the food chain. Nature has been balancing it for eons. Predicating the effects is not trivial, maybe not even possible with our current technology (look at all the ecological disasters humans have caused thinking they know better).
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:09AM (1 child)
In the couple of places where mosquitoes have been totally eradicated, no adverse effects have been reported. It's true the places were small islands, and I haven't checked back recently, but such evidence as exists seems to imply that the eradication of mosquitoes would yield no adverse result.
Clearly this needs to be confirmed on a broader scale before going global with the project, and probably a few should be kept in reserve in case it turns out in the future that they are, indeed, necessary. But the evidence I'm aware of indicates that a push forwards is desirable. However, some of the proposed methods seem questionable. In particular there is a small amount of cross species gene transfer that happens naturally. It's at quite a low level, but it's still enough to make some of the proposed methods worrisome. (IIUC the cross species gene transfer is usually mediated by a virus that uses reverse transcriptase, and it also seems as if there is often a need for a bacterial infection that moves from species to species picking up plasmids, and releasing them when injured.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PocketSizeSUn on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:28PM
Mosquitoes were introduced to the Hawaii islands. They seemed to function as a ecosystem just fine before the mosquito.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @03:58AM
Also, there are thousands of species of mosquitoes, and only a handful (20 or so) that target humans. Let's just wipe-out the 20 "bad" ones.
Hey, it worked for smallpox. We killed off the passenger pigeon (nasty creatures left droppings everywhere), the short-faced bear, the auroch, etc. etc. etc... Life goes on, but better.