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posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @12:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the hope-there-are-no-bugs-in-the-bugs-fighting-the-bugs dept.

The EPA has approved the use of bacteria-treated mosquitoes to help reduce mosquito populations. The approval will be effective for five years in 20 states and D.C.:

On November 3, 2017, EPA registered a new mosquito biopesticide – ZAP Males® - that can reduce local populations of the type of mosquito (Aedes albopictus, or Asian Tiger Mosquitoes) that can spread numerous diseases of significant human health concern, including the Zika virus.

ZAP Males® are live male mosquitoes that are infected with the ZAP strain, a particular strain of the Wolbachia bacterium. Infected males mate with females, which then produce offspring that do not survive. (Male mosquitoes do not bite people.) With continued releases of the ZAP Males®, local Aedes albopictus populations decrease. Wolbachia are naturally occurring bacteria commonly found in most insect species.

Nature reports:

"It's a non-chemical way of dealing with mosquitoes, so from that perspective, you'd think it would have a lot of appeal," says David O'Brochta, an entomologist at the University of Maryland in Rockville."I'm glad to see it pushed forward, as I think it could be potentially really important."

MosquitoMate will rear the Wolbachia-infected A. albopictus mosquitoes in its laboratories, and then sort males from females. Then the laboratory males, which don't bite, will be released at treatment sites. When these males mate with wild females, which do not carry the same strain of Wolbachia, the resulting fertilized eggs don't hatch because the paternal chromosomes do not form properly.

The company says that over time, as more of the Wolbachia-infected males are released and breed with the wild partners, the pest population of A. albopictus mosquitoes dwindles. Other insects, including other species of mosquito, are not harmed by the practice, says Stephen Dobson, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and founder of MosquitoMate.

NPR has reprinted a 2012 article about the idea. Also at Newsweek.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Friday November 10 2017, @02:40PM (7 children)

    by KritonK (465) on Friday November 10 2017, @02:40PM (#595130)

    In a couple of years, most mosquitoes will be the offspring of females that won't mate with infected males. These offspring will inherit that trait, so we'll be back to square one.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 10 2017, @03:11PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 10 2017, @03:11PM (#595143) Journal

    Alternate scenario, mosquitoes evolve defenses to the bacteria of infected males.

    Artificially induced evolution may have other undesirable effects.

    But hey, it solves our problem today. So pollute the air and water. Burn those fossil fuels. Chow down those opioids! Eat those donuts! Introduce genetically modified crops that gradually out compete and wipe out the natural species.

    --
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @04:04PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @04:04PM (#595164)

      We're using bacteria to damage males grown in a captive population. It's similar to how we use radiation to damage male fruit flies.

      We control our captive population. Mosquitoes which have been exposed to the bacteria don't go back into our breeding pool in the captive population; they are instead released (if male) or killed.

      Outside our mosquito factory, bacteria resistance doesn't matter. The chromosomes in the males are already damaged.

      Evolving to evade this attack is not at all simple. Remember too that we can respond to any change.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 10 2017, @05:09PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 10 2017, @05:09PM (#595199) Journal

        That is a good explanation. What you are saying, if I understand, is that the male, as delivered from the factory, is unable to produce an offspring. And the female won't ask for a refund or replacement item.

        So it is not a matter of some astronomically small chance that one out of billions of female mosquitoes will have the random mutation that allows producing an offspring and getting the evolutionary ball rolling. You're saying there is zero chance, out to infinite decimal places, that the male can produce offspring.

        It seems then, that you have to produce as many males as you expect there to be females in a given area. So you would need to breed / infect / release males as fast or faster than they naturally occur. Or maybe just at a rate that brings down the entire population by a necessary percentage in each breeding cycle to ensure extermination.

        I wonder if AIs will think of something like that for humans.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @03:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @03:57PM (#595163)

    This is a minor variation of a type of bacteria that is found all over nearly every kind of insect. Avoiding the bacteria (by smell?) isn't likely to work when every existing mosquito has similar bacteria.

  • (Score: 2) by jcross on Friday November 10 2017, @07:19PM (2 children)

    by jcross (4009) on Friday November 10 2017, @07:19PM (#595285)

    Just what I was going to say, it sounds like an ideal trigger for speciation. Anything having to do directly with mate preference like this is going to drive evolution fast.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 10 2017, @09:03PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 10 2017, @09:03PM (#595347) Journal

      Couldn't a speciation event hurt the fitness of the new species?

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      • (Score: 2) by jcross on Monday November 13 2017, @06:31PM

        by jcross (4009) on Monday November 13 2017, @06:31PM (#596363)

        Sure, but the new species whose females select for non-sterile males will definitely be more fit than the ones who don't have that preference. Any other genes that tag along for the ride might be disadvantageous or advantageous, but once the new species is no longer susceptible to population control I would guess it would fill the abandoned niche back up pretty quickly, and the unhelpful genes would be dropped over the next generations. The dumb thing to me is that this intervention is effectively a parasite that kills off its host, and it's a near certainty mosquitoes have dealt with such things before and that's why their current wolbachia isn't so harmful. Maybe if humans continue to maintain our own crippled strains that continue to match the ones in the wild, this could actually work. I hope that's what they're planning to do.