3 ms·

The fungus is supposed to be deployed on a rather small scale. It is not infectious for other insects, so it's probably not able to spread very far. Most of all

The fungus is supposed to be deployed on a rather small scale. It is not infectious for other insects, so it's probably not able to spread very far. Most of all, it is already freely spreading in its natural form, and does not lead to mass extinction of these malaria mosquitos, proven by the fact that they still exist... On top of that the spider venom is probably bad for the fungus. Apart from taking away resources from synthesizing actually useful proteins, it kills the hosts much more quickly. The fungus probably prefers to kill the host slowly in order to cover more distance.

fiblye 7y ago
>It is not infectious for other insects Yet. It’s definitely possible for it to adapt to infect something that’ll help it proliferate farther.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Which would be a much bigger evolutionary leap compared to losing the spider venom. And dauntingly big for a fungus that kills off 99% of hosts in the region that quickly. I presume that the fungus is obligatorily parasitic, meaning it can't thrive outside its host, except as a spore. This is true for most pathogenic fungi. From the article it's not even clear that the fungus "spreads" well or at all in a mosquito population. I think they intend to grow the spores large-scale in a lab, and infect most of the mosquitos directly, and not through secondary transmission... Also: The fungus already exists in the wild. It just doesn't kill the host that quickly.