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posted by CoolHand on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the bloodsucker-witch-hunt dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mosquitoes aren't just blood thirsty. They also have a sweet tooth, relying on plant nectar to get the sugar they need to survive. Exploiting this weakness, scientists have developed an environmentally friendly eradication method. The new, inexpensive technique tricks these annoying pests into gorging themselves on insecticides laced with a concoction that mimics the sweet-smelling scents and aromas that they find irresistible. It could bolster efforts to suppress malaria, Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases worldwide.

The researchers are presenting their work today at the 254th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"The blend of chemicals that we use to attract mosquitoes is so powerful that they will ignore natural plant odors and attractants in order to get to our formulation," says Agenor Mafra-Neto, Ph.D. "From a mosquito's point of view, it's like having an irresistible chocolate shop on every corner. The product is so seductive that they will feed on it almost exclusively, even when it contains lethal doses of insecticide."

Conventional chemical insecticides used to control mosquitoes are used as cover sprays, frequently dispersed over wide areas. But this blanket spray approach exposes people and animals to potentially harmful compounds and can kill bees and other beneficial insects. In addition, residues of these sprays can contaminate soils and streams, as well as promote increased pesticide resistance. To overcome these issues, Mafra-Neto of ISCA Technologies and colleagues at several universities sought to create a more targeted approach using an insecticide potion spiked with a blend of semiochemicals, or chemical signals, that mosquitoes can't resist.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:49PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @04:49PM (#558495)

    I hate mosquitoes as much as anyone, but these little bastards aren't the only ones who like sugar/nectar.

    Bees home in on plants due to UV cues as much as anything else, so perhaps they won't be hugely affected. But just randomly spraying this stuff around is definitely going to hit other species, too. Not just insects, either - hummingbirds are all about sugar. At this stage, probably best to have cautious optimism at best.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:21PM (3 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:21PM (#558508)

    I didn't read TFA, but I think the idea is that you don't spray this stuff at all; you set traps. With that approach, you can do what another poster here suggested and design the trap so birds and bees simply can't get to the poison. Mosquitoes are much, much smaller than bees (or hummingbirds for that matter), so they can fit into tiny places those other creatures cannot. The main problem I see is if there's other insects the size of mosquitoes that would also be attracted.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:35PM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:35PM (#558580) Journal

      Cool. I can see the trap filled to the brim with mosquito corpses in, like, half an hour (Ok, let's be generous, 30 minutes).
      After which... how can new mosquitoes get to reach the bait?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:15PM (#558601)

        I'm sure someone can come up with a clever solution to avoid the trap being clogged with dead mosquitoes. This isn't that hard.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:40PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:40PM (#558652)

          Gorge, fly off in search of blood, in a half hour or so, the bug is experiencing metabolic failures.

  • (Score: 2) by ese002 on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:21PM (1 child)

    by ese002 (5306) on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:21PM (#558509)

    Bees home in on plants due to UV cues as much as anything else, so perhaps they won't be hugely affected. But just randomly spraying this stuff around is definitely going to hit other species, too. Not just insects, either - hummingbirds are all about sugar. At this stage, probably best to have cautious optimism at best.

    Technically, it wouldn't effect hummingbirds because there are no hummingbirds in Tanzania where the testing is happening. But, yeah, lots of animals like sweets. Butterflies, moths, many varieties of pollinating and non-pollinating wasps, ants. Also sun birds (sort of the Old World version of a humming bird), bears, monkeys. It is likely that the insecticide would not be fatal to any vertebrates and it is probably not very good for them. Insects come in such an amazing variety, it would be nearly impossible to select a sweet that would only attract and kill mosquitoes.