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I dont get it, if you release a ton of sterile male mosquitos.. what exactly is their purpose? They cant bite, breed or spread diseases.. well okay, but why wou
by hubert123 10y ago
I dont get it, if you release a ton of sterile male mosquitos.. what exactly is their purpose?
They cant bite, breed or spread diseases.. well okay, but why would the amount of bad mosquitos decrease in any way from their introduction?
Wouldnt they simply die out quickly then, what's the lifespan of these good mosquitos?
I dont get it at all.
- SonOfLilit 10y agoIt would result in a lot of "childless mosquito marriages". Do this each year for a few breeding seasons and the population will die out. Run the math, it happens surprisingly quickly.
- metachris 10y agohttp://debugproject.com/how/ http://debugproject.com/how/ Looks like they mate with females, which still lay eggs, but the won't hatch. So less bad bugs mate and produce offspring. Needs large numbers of good bugs though.
- hubert123 10y agoYeah it sounds like it would be better if the eggs still hatched but they should only produce good male mosquitos again.
- bagels 10y agoThey're only 'good' because they're sterile, and capable of sabotaging mosquito reproduction. If they weren't sterile and "only produce good male mosquitos again", the population would not decrease, they would just be releasing regular male mosquitos.
- hubert123 10y agoright, which means that eventually the entire population would be male and then die off
- sp332 10y agoI was about to say that's impossible because meiosis produces equal number of "male" and "female" cells but... someone actually did it. https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/06/eradicating-female-malaria-bearing-mosquitos.html https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/06/eradic...