3 ms·
Amusingly, anthropophilia versus zoophilia is genetic. If we all cleared out of Africa completely, those problematic mosquito strains may well go extinct. Now I
by saulrh 11y ago
Amusingly, anthropophilia versus zoophilia is genetic. If we all cleared out of Africa completely, those problematic mosquito strains may well go extinct. Now I'm wondering how fast they'd re-evolve. So it's probably more like the case I thought of at the end of my first post, where we'd have to stamp the property back out every time it evolved. It'd be pretty easy, though, and without a major animal reservoir it'd probably give us enough breathing room to eradicate the disease itself with ebola-style quarantines.
- theptip 11y agoThat's interesting; could another approach then be to use CRISPR to switch the anthropophilic species to zoophilic, and thus sidestep the "ecological destruction" argument that is the main objection to just destroying those species? I think a cost-benefit analysis supports gene-drive-based mosquito eradication, but this option might be as effective and more politically palatable.
- saulrh 11y agoYou'd be forcing them into another ecological niche, where without additional changes to adapt them to their new diet they'd likely be outcompeted and die. It'd be a complicated and inefficient route to eradicating them just as surely as if you'd killed them all.