13 ms·

Mosquitoes Changed Everything

143 points by sasvari 7y ago

tomrod 7y ago
Because the advantages are obvious, what are the disadvantages of killing all mosquitoes?
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  It's not even that. There are only a few mosquito species that can carry the malaria parasite. If we exterminate them, they will/can be replaced by other, hard to distinguish mosquito species. We now have the technology to do that, but aren't (yet) doing it, even though it kills over a million people a year. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mosquitos-crispr https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mosquitos-crispr
  - littlestymaar 7y ago
    > even though it kills over a million people a year. It doesn't actually. It kills around 400,000 a year, mostly because of poor medical infrastructure. That's roughly the same amount of death than the flue (a little more in average), and it kills really little people who have access to modern medicine. For a strange reason I don't get, Malaria is way more “popular” in the western world than other diseases like tuberculosis which cause much more deaths each year (4 times more deaths, less than a tenth of the media coverage).
    - Something1234 7y ago
      Is there something more terrifying about maleria over tb?
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      I haven't counted myself, but UNICEF says it's over a million: https://www.unicef.org/health/files/health_africamalaria.pdf https://www.unicef.org/health/files/health_africamalaria.pdf Also "An estimated 300-600 million people suffer from malaria each year." I'd speculate that malaria seems more fixable than TB.
      - littlestymaar 7y ago
        Idk where the discrepancy comes from, but I trust WHO[1] more than UNICEF on this kind of topics. About our ability to fix the issue: I agree with you, and that's why I really don't like the idea of something as extreme as eradication of a whole specie with gene drive for something that's mainly an infrastructure/underdevelopment issue in Africa. [1]: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria
        BurningFrog 7y ago
        Only about 40 of the 3500 mosquito species are able to spread malaria, so eradicating those would very likely only result in the other 3460 taking over their habitats. Unless you're concerned with the survival of the parasite itself? I'm confused by infrastructure/underdevelopment argument. Malaria wasn't eradicated in the rich world through health care. We mass slaughtered our mosquitos until the problem was gone.
        littlestymaar 7y ago
        I'm not too much concerned about those 40 species. What I'm concerned about is the Sorcerer's Apprentice behavior. Gene drive is an incredibly powerful tool and we don't know what could go wrong if we tried to use it to wipe-out a specific species. Actually, the «Species» concept is a scientific model, but we know it's simplistic: inside a given species, not all the individuals have the same genes[1] (I'm not talking about alleles here) and we know that some distinct species can mate together and have fertile offspring [2], so we can't know for sure that the gene drive won't affect other species as well. It could even wipe out the entire family of mosquitoes. Using this kind of untested nuclear tool to fight a not-so-big issue that have been successfully fought everywhere but in Africa is not a responsible move, that's my point. Also: > Malaria wasn't eradicated in the rich world through health care. We mass slaughtered our mosquitos until the problem was gone. Anopheles Atroparvus (Western Europe), Anopheles Messae (North-eastern Europe), Anopheles Quadrimaculatus (Eastern-US), and Anopheles Freeborni (West coast) are still here[3], but you don't have malaria there anymore. We killed a lot of mosquitoes to get rid of malaria, but we didn't have to kill them all to eradicate the epidemics. The thing is: malaria doesn't come from the mosquitoes only. To get a malaria epidemics, you need a pool of sick people the mosquitoes bite and get infected. Once you fixed the epidemics, the mosquitoes aren't an issue anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-genome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-genome [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles#/media/File:Anopheles-range-map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles#/media/File:Anophele...
    - wetpaws 7y ago
      This changes everything. 400k people a year is a penny change, I'm sure we can safely ignore them.
      - littlestymaar 7y ago
        It's not about the number in itself, it's about the causes: Gene drive enthusiasts say: “this is a dramatic issue which need extreme bio-engineering to solve it because we have no other solutions”. Whereas in reality, it's a concerning health issue (but much less concerning at a global scale than cigarettes or mere junk food) that's almost fixed worldwide with conventional means (health infrastructures, local mosquitoes elimination, bug nets, and there's even a pilot program for a vaccine with promising results) and would have been solved if Africa wasn't in such a poor shape in term of development. For the record, the whole western Europe is infested with Anopheles Atroparvus[1] which is a vector for malaria (and have been a source of many malaria epidemics in Europe in the past) yet there is no more malaria there nowadays, and in some places with high levels of water pollution it has even been considered an endangered specie and is slowly recovering. [1]: https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/facts/mosquito-factsheets/anopheles-atroparvus https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/facts/mosquito-fac...
        wetpaws 7y ago
        Less dead people is better then more dead people regardless of how you would look at this.
        alluro2 7y ago
        For the sake of argument - what about more alive people, but with more dead animals / species and with failing ecosystems if something would not go quite as foreseen with crispr method? That question is becoming more and more important as humanity has such larger potential of affecting the rest of nature - how much more valuable is human life over everything else on the planet...
    - jdsully 7y ago
      Because we are tantalizingly close to eradicating it. The low death rate is a sign of success not a signal to stop.
      - littlestymaar 7y ago
        I'm not talking about stopping or anything. What I'am saying is : 1- The malaria issue is depicted as bigger than it is nowadays, as if the western world has some kind of weird fetish about it. 2- Maybe using world-changing genetic engineering is not really worth it, as we already made huge progress toward the solution without using such a extreme solution.
        9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        Malaria impacts swathes of prime tropical beach land useful for building vacation resorts for rich people. On the other hand, most people associate tuberculosis with Russian jails.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    There's still an issue with Zika and West Nile. And other unknown or future mosquito borne diseases.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Fewer predators of mosquitoes (dragon flies? Larvae eating fish, bats). They eat nectar, so something else would have to take their place in pollinisation (probably no problem). Increased population of mosquito prey - livestock, humans. Overall, sounds like a risk worth taking.
  - learc83 7y ago
    Their are far more mosquito species that don't bite humans, those species would almost certainly fill the gap.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      But will they still fly around my ears as I’m trying to sleep? If so, in the bin they go.
      - amelius 7y ago
        Use earplugs.
      - wmeredith 7y ago
        Annoying is a far different proposition than plague-spreading.
        Scoundreller 7y ago
        If you can solve one, we're not much further from solving the other. People do a lot to solve annoying. Here's Winnipeg Canada's Nuisance Mosquito Fogging Program: https://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/insectcontrol/mosquitoes/nuisanceschedule.stm https://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/insectcontrol/mosquitoes/nui...
      - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
        Get over it.
    - ip26 7y ago
- Tiktaalik 7y ago
  When has humans meddling in ecologies ever worked fine without huge negative side effects?
  - cm2012 7y ago
    Off the top of my head: Eliminating hookworm in the USA. Bringing wolves back to Yellowstone.
    - Tiktaalik 7y ago
      We can probably strike wolves off the list since it's a restorative act. In Yellowstone's natural state prior to human intervention it had wolves were part of the ecology. The general way meddling in ecologies goes is that humans remove or add something and the entire ecology becomes grossly distorted. (Eg. Driving Sea Otters to near extinction creates a bloom of Sea Urchins, which devastate ocean habitat of so many other species etc etc)
      - diggernet 7y ago
        Excellent point. Let us also strike eradicating invasive species from the list for being a restorative act. And then proceed with eliminating the Aedes mosquito from most of the places it is now found.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    Eradicating smallpox?
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Well, let's not celebrate our success on the war just after a battle was won, let's wait for the next battles first. We could have just made things worst and more threatening... https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/
- coldtea 7y ago
  The fact that we know almost nothing about complex environmental chains and interactions, and we have made huge messes almost any time we attempted to mess with such a system (either on purpose or not). Of course, Earth in the end will be fine (it will reach some other equilibrium), but tons of us might be wiped out in the process.
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Can you point to any other species we’ve eradicated that has resulted in a massive human death toll? From my perspective we seem to be pretty good at killing things and getting away with it.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      If those things are creatures like tigers, living in isolated environments, yes. If they are creatures that live all around the environment and play into special roles, then no. E.g. http://sos-bees.org/situation/ http://sos-bees.org/situation/
- nine_k 7y ago
  We of course should not eradicate all mosquitoes. We need to only eradicate the blood-sucking types. Many mosquitoes do not suck blood; they eat plant products and / or suck plant juices. They could take over the ecological niche of the blood-sucking varieties, and can even be cultivated a little bit to support the local mosquito-eating populations of birds, bats, dragonflies, etc.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  Natural ecosystems are notorious for unintended consequences of intervention.
cnorthwood 7y ago
There's a lot of interesting work in eradicating malaria. Genetically modified mosquitos is one of them, which deserves careful watch https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/mutant-mosquitoes-can-gene-editing-kill-malaria/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas.... The Centre for Effective Altruism looks at ranking charities on effectiveness, and the Against Malaria Foundation always ranks very highly.
- tylorr 7y ago
  Givewell also ranks that foundation very highly
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    Details for people who might want to dig in. https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf
- mycall 7y ago
  I'm waiting for the laser defense system for my back yard.
  - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
    Where is the technology for this? This is an idea I had as a kid, everything I learned about science deems this possible.
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      There is a lot of research just lying around, waiting to be used. Check out PEANO-HASEL.
    - mhb 7y ago
      https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_z...
codysan 7y ago
Is there a species as universally loathed as the mosquito?
- zabzonk 7y ago
  Cockroaches
- adrianN 7y ago
  All blood sucking insects (e.g. ticks, bedbugs, fleas), all human parasites (e.g. Guinea worm).
- cagenut 7y ago
  landlords
  - amelius 7y ago
    And lawyers, car salesmen, Facebook employees ...
- nosianu 7y ago
  Bed bugs are a thousand times worse! I can easily protect myself against mosquitoes. It is much - much! - harder to get rid of bed bugs. The last time I had only one or two and it was a nightmare. I spare you the details, there are plenty of anecdotes out there. The net did not help at all. I was lucky to notice that one night when I accidentally had the blanket reversed - the part wehre the feet were, usually, was where my head was for that one night - I got bitten on the upper part of my body instead of the lower one. I immediately put the entire blanket including sheets into a plastic bag and threw it away. I had actually examined the sheet as well as the blanket very carefully and had found nothing. No idea where exactly those tiny critters were hiding, but afterwards I had no more bites. Seriously, with bed bugs you have to take extreme measures. In comparison, all you need against mosquitoes is a net! I learned to like mosquitoes now, given that nightmarish alternative experience with bed bugs. Mosquito bites are much more "friendly" and easier to live with too!
  - 7y ago
akkartik 7y ago
Has there been any research into eradicating the Plasmodium parasite, rather than mosquitoes?
- _delirium 7y ago
  There's a lot of research into anti-Plasmodium drugs in general (because they can be used in treating infected humans), but none have come close to being usable for general environmental dispersal that would try to eliminate the wild reservoir. Mixture of cost, resistance developing too quickly, and effects on other wildlife, so doing something like dropping quinine into forests from planes has never been a real option. This is in general very unlikely to work for diseases that have a significant non-human reservoir. Smallpox was able to be eliminated because it exclusively infects humans, so you only need to eradicate it from human hosts, not also from another extremely populous host like wild mosquitoes. Another approach is to try to genetically engineer mosquitoes resistant to infection and have them replace the unmodified carrier versions, but that's essentially just a variant of the idea to eradicate the carrier-type mosquitoes: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/engineering-malaria-resistance-mosquitoes https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/enginee...
mitchtbaum 7y ago
The fascinating reason why there are no mosquitoes at Disney World http://mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-are-no-mosquitoes-in-disney-world http://mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-are-n... * [Disney (Creator) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Disney) * [Walt Disney (Creator) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/WaltDisney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/WaltDisney) * [Mr. Alt Disney - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MrAltDisney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MrAltDisney) * [Disney / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Disney) * [Disney Theme Parks (Ride) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ride/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ride/DisneyThemeParks) * [Disney / Adored By The Network - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AdoredByTheNetwork/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AdoredByTheNetwork/Di...) * [Disney Theme Parks / YMMV - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DisneyThemeParks) * [Disney Theme Parks / Awesome - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Awesome/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Awesome/DisneyThemePa...) * ~~~
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  tl;dr Carbon Dioxide traps. I have no idea what all the tvtropes links are doing in this comment. Some weird kind of spam maybe?
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    They do what they can with CO2 traps, but they'll spray insecticide everywhere if they have to. Some believe the CO2 traps are just used as a guide for when they need to spray/fog, which makes sense.
  - weaksauce 7y ago
    Probably a copy paste thing. Formatting looks like markdown for reddit.
gen220 7y ago
I had a sci-fi-plot idea while swatting my nth mosquito on a camping trip last month. What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses instead of harmful ones? Just think about it: no more scheduling appointments for vaccines or flu shots, simply wait outside for 20 minutes in the summer, and before you know it you’re immunized against malaria, measles, etc. Not being a biologist, I have no idea if this is a plausible scenario, but I hope that somebody investigates it! It might be a very cost-effective and democratic method of delivering care. At the very least it’d make for a good black mirror episode :)
- coldtea 7y ago
  >What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses instead of harmful ones? Yeah, what could go wrong with this? It's not like those "useful viruses" could ever evolve out in the wild to something more threatening!
  - gen220 7y ago
    A great sci-fi plot! heh But to be clear, some vaccines are "useful viruses" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine Also gene therapy often uses viruses as a vector for delivery: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures So, it's not too crazy an idea.
    - brooksyd2 7y ago
      I'm not an expert in this area by any means, but my understanding is that vaccines use dead viruses rather than live ones, and they need a particular amount over time. So this wouldn't allow the virus to be passed along by mosquito generations, and you obviously couldn't control the dose amount. So not sure how practical the idea would be.
nickgrosvenor 7y ago
More politicians should campaign on eradicating mosquitoes in their local communities using gene editing. In the last decade Los Angeles has been infested with Aedes mosquitoes. A much more dangerous type than the culex we’re used to. They need much less water to grow eggs, Attack the lower body of humans quickly in short bursts so they’re harder to swat, and can transfer all the dangerous diseases mosquitoes are known for. Very scary and very solvable before it gets out of hand. https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-m...
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Most of them would opt for the simpler solution of spraying more chemicals everywhere as if they only affect mosquitos
- ip26 7y ago
  Not only scary & solvable, but eradicating invasive species is also generally considered a safe & ecologically desirable thing.
- Luke-Jr 7y ago
  Is it indeed possible to eradicate mosquitoes? Outside my house at certain parts of the day, there's tons and it only takes a few seconds to get swarmed. :( What is the latest-and-greatest mosquito extermination tech?
  - acdha 7y ago
    We bought some GAT traps to thin the swarms of tiger mosquitos we have in DC and it seems to be working: https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/ https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/ What I really want to mature is the photonic fence but that’s been slow going: https://photonicsentry.com/ https://photonicsentry.com/
  - ip26 7y ago
    The sterile-male technique is IMO the latest & greatest. You breed vast quantities of sterile males (which do not bite, only females bite) and release them in an area. They compete with viable males for mates, and the net effect is suppressing the reproduction of the population. It exhibits some very desirable attributes. It's incredibly selective, targeting only one species. It is also self-limiting, there is no feedback loop that could run out of control and there are no chemicals that could accumulate in the environment. For a while the cost of breeding the males was prohibitive but some recent innovation has dropped the cost tremendously.
LeoPanthera 7y ago
I don't know if it's too off-topic but I'd be happy to hijack these comments for a quick discussion of the best way to get rid of mosquitos from around your home. I live in the mountains in California and the little buggers are everywhere. I bought a UV bug zapper without realising that mosquitos are apparently not attracted to UV. I later learned that they are attracted to CO2, but discussion of CO2 traps on the web imply that they also work very poorly. Is there anything that can be usefully done?
- nightfly 7y ago
  Try and make sure you don't have any pools of stagnant water around. (long lasting puddles, buckets, other random concavities water can collect in.)
  - pixl97 7y ago
    It can be very difficult to find them all. Very small amounts of water can host larvae as long as it is persistent. Potted plants that are watered often and outside drip lines for AC's are really common spots for unintended mosquito farms.
  - whiddershins 7y ago
    Unless you live on a very large property, the range of the mosquitoes usually far exceed the range of your control over standing water.
    - learc83 7y ago
      That depends on the species. Some species tend to stay within a few hundred feet of their breeding grounds, while others can travel for miles (but even then many will still tend to stay very close by).
  - IvyMike 7y ago
    The Aedes mosquitoes that are invading Los Angeles will apparently breed in an upturned bottle cap or "in the depression of a wrinkled old bag of chips that gets hit by a sprinkler.". Good luck finding all pools of water that big on any significant property. (LA Times semi-paywalled article: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-m... )
SubiculumCode 7y ago
Biting mosquitoes is one of the few species I have no qualms about eradicating. Other related species do all the kinds of work in the ecosystem that they do, but without nearly the risk to humans. Eradicate them.
kingkawn 7y ago
A few years ago I decided to stop killing mosquitos. I still swat them, but my aim now is inflict PTSD on them so that they avoid environmental triggers that remind them of me, and all their offspring do the same. How can they learn if we kill them? Has it worked? Prob not, but I feel like I’m doing something new at least.
- errantmind 7y ago
  Not sure if this is a joke. If not, they 'learn' by not surviving long enough to pass on their genes
  - kingkawn 7y ago
    There are numerous behavioral adaptations passed on via epigenetic methylation of the relevant genes in all species, mosquitos included.
Rothnargoth 7y ago
Pretty interesting knowing mosquitoes were weaponized in the past. The irony in the fact this took place in the modern era, and not in medieval times, where they were known for catapulting diseased carcasses.
DoctorBit 7y ago
An interesting article about the US army's fight against malaria in the pacific theater during WW II: https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight-against-malaria-in-the-pacific-theater-1942-45/ https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight-ag... TL;DR: By spraying DDT everywhere, and coercing troops to take Atabrine (that often had nasty side effects), they reduced malaria incidence by about 70%. The Japanese, by contrast had little protection - nearly all Japanese soldiers had malaria at some time.
- acdha 7y ago
  One caution: pesticides like DDT are more effective at first, before the local population is selected for resistance. The big anti-malaria campaigns in the 1950s tended to report resistance being a significant impediment with a decade: http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/ http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/
  - joecool1029 7y ago
    It would be curious to know whether the resistance was just to the killing effect of the mosquito or if it still continued to repel and stop them from biting. One of the huge advantages of DDT over later pesticides is that it stopped them from biting, the other ones keep them biting until they're dead. I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential application to the house (screens, nets, walls). The quantities applied here were much smaller than for agricultural use, and there has never been a study that convincingly showed harm to mammals. (Even the bird egg shell thinning theory was tenuous at best, TEL in leaded fuel could have had the same effect in the targeted time period)
    - _delirium 7y ago
      > I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential application to the house (screens, nets, walls). The international anti-DDT treaty allows countries to take this route, and as a result DDT is still legal for residential use in some countries where malaria is endemic. The US opted for a total ban, though.
oska 7y ago
> The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator The mosquito is a parasite, not a predator. When the author of the book mislabels the ecological niche occupied by the mosquito in the title of his book it gives little confidence in his rigour or level of insight.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator > A micropredator attacks more than one host, reducing each host's fitness at least a small amount, and is only in contact with any one host intermittently. This makes them suitable as vectors as they can pass smaller parasites from one host to another. Most micropredators are hematophagic, feeding on blood. They include annelids such as leeches, crustaceans such as branchiurans and gnathiid isopods, various dipterans such as mosquitoes and tsetse flies, other arthropods such as fleas and ticks, vertebrates such as lampreys, and mammals such as vampire bats. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is-a-mosquito-feeding-on-human-blood-not-a-parasite https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is-a-m... > A mosquito is a biological parasite, it is not a medical parasite. Plus, it's a figure of speech talking about the fact that they kill a lot of us humans.
  - oska 7y ago
    I question the redefinition of predator, an organism that hunts and consumes its prey, in this term micropredator. I wonder how accepted and widespread its use is. And the author doesn't use this much more restricted term. He didn't title his book A Human History of Our Deadliest Micropredator. Because he's going for sensationalism, as is more fully demonstrated in quotes from the book given later in the article: > In total, Winegard estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived. He calls them “our apex predator,” “the destroyer of worlds,” and “the ultimate agent of historical change.” To your own assertion that mosquitoes kill a lot of humans - they only do so indirectly as a vector for disease. This is a very important distinction - if we are going to eradicate anything it would be better to eradicate the microbial killer parasites they carry, such as Plasmodium falciparum, not the carriers themselves (which are an important food source for many actual predators).
chovy 7y ago
https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky-mosquitos-in-the-backyard/ https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky-mosqu...
aussieguy1234 7y ago
Here's one solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive The costs are so low that even a developing country could afford to do it, at a cost way lower than mosquito control by other methods. Sure there are unknown consequences, but that probably won't stop them if their fellow countrymen are dying.

143 points by sasvari 7y ago

tomrod 7y ago

Because the advantages are obvious, what are the disadvantages of killing all mosquitoes?

BurningFrog 7y ago
It's not even that. There are only a few mosquito species that can carry the malaria parasite. If we exterminate them, they will/can be replaced by other, hard to distinguish mosquito species. We now have the technology to do that, but aren't (yet) doing it, even though it kills over a million people a year. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mosquitos-crispr https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mosquitos-crispr
- littlestymaar 7y ago
  > even though it kills over a million people a year. It doesn't actually. It kills around 400,000 a year, mostly because of poor medical infrastructure. That's roughly the same amount of death than the flue (a little more in average), and it kills really little people who have access to modern medicine. For a strange reason I don't get, Malaria is way more “popular” in the western world than other diseases like tuberculosis which cause much more deaths each year (4 times more deaths, less than a tenth of the media coverage).
  - Something1234 7y ago
    Is there something more terrifying about maleria over tb?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    I haven't counted myself, but UNICEF says it's over a million: https://www.unicef.org/health/files/health_africamalaria.pdf https://www.unicef.org/health/files/health_africamalaria.pdf Also "An estimated 300-600 million people suffer from malaria each year." I'd speculate that malaria seems more fixable than TB.
    - littlestymaar 7y ago
      Idk where the discrepancy comes from, but I trust WHO[1] more than UNICEF on this kind of topics. About our ability to fix the issue: I agree with you, and that's why I really don't like the idea of something as extreme as eradication of a whole specie with gene drive for something that's mainly an infrastructure/underdevelopment issue in Africa. [1]: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria
      - BurningFrog 7y ago
        Only about 40 of the 3500 mosquito species are able to spread malaria, so eradicating those would very likely only result in the other 3460 taking over their habitats. Unless you're concerned with the survival of the parasite itself? I'm confused by infrastructure/underdevelopment argument. Malaria wasn't eradicated in the rich world through health care. We mass slaughtered our mosquitos until the problem was gone.
        littlestymaar 7y ago
        I'm not too much concerned about those 40 species. What I'm concerned about is the Sorcerer's Apprentice behavior. Gene drive is an incredibly powerful tool and we don't know what could go wrong if we tried to use it to wipe-out a specific species. Actually, the «Species» concept is a scientific model, but we know it's simplistic: inside a given species, not all the individuals have the same genes[1] (I'm not talking about alleles here) and we know that some distinct species can mate together and have fertile offspring [2], so we can't know for sure that the gene drive won't affect other species as well. It could even wipe out the entire family of mosquitoes. Using this kind of untested nuclear tool to fight a not-so-big issue that have been successfully fought everywhere but in Africa is not a responsible move, that's my point. Also: > Malaria wasn't eradicated in the rich world through health care. We mass slaughtered our mosquitos until the problem was gone. Anopheles Atroparvus (Western Europe), Anopheles Messae (North-eastern Europe), Anopheles Quadrimaculatus (Eastern-US), and Anopheles Freeborni (West coast) are still here[3], but you don't have malaria there anymore. We killed a lot of mosquitoes to get rid of malaria, but we didn't have to kill them all to eradicate the epidemics. The thing is: malaria doesn't come from the mosquitoes only. To get a malaria epidemics, you need a pool of sick people the mosquitoes bite and get infected. Once you fixed the epidemics, the mosquitoes aren't an issue anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-genome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-genome [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefalo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles#/media/File:Anopheles-range-map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles#/media/File:Anophele...
  - wetpaws 7y ago
    This changes everything. 400k people a year is a penny change, I'm sure we can safely ignore them.
    - littlestymaar 7y ago
      It's not about the number in itself, it's about the causes: Gene drive enthusiasts say: “this is a dramatic issue which need extreme bio-engineering to solve it because we have no other solutions”. Whereas in reality, it's a concerning health issue (but much less concerning at a global scale than cigarettes or mere junk food) that's almost fixed worldwide with conventional means (health infrastructures, local mosquitoes elimination, bug nets, and there's even a pilot program for a vaccine with promising results) and would have been solved if Africa wasn't in such a poor shape in term of development. For the record, the whole western Europe is infested with Anopheles Atroparvus[1] which is a vector for malaria (and have been a source of many malaria epidemics in Europe in the past) yet there is no more malaria there nowadays, and in some places with high levels of water pollution it has even been considered an endangered specie and is slowly recovering. [1]: https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/facts/mosquito-factsheets/anopheles-atroparvus https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/disease-vectors/facts/mosquito-fac...
      - wetpaws 7y ago
        Less dead people is better then more dead people regardless of how you would look at this.
        alluro2 7y ago
        For the sake of argument - what about more alive people, but with more dead animals / species and with failing ecosystems if something would not go quite as foreseen with crispr method? That question is becoming more and more important as humanity has such larger potential of affecting the rest of nature - how much more valuable is human life over everything else on the planet...
  - jdsully 7y ago
    Because we are tantalizingly close to eradicating it. The low death rate is a sign of success not a signal to stop.
    - littlestymaar 7y ago
      I'm not talking about stopping or anything. What I'am saying is : 1- The malaria issue is depicted as bigger than it is nowadays, as if the western world has some kind of weird fetish about it. 2- Maybe using world-changing genetic engineering is not really worth it, as we already made huge progress toward the solution without using such a extreme solution.
      - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        Malaria impacts swathes of prime tropical beach land useful for building vacation resorts for rich people. On the other hand, most people associate tuberculosis with Russian jails.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  There's still an issue with Zika and West Nile. And other unknown or future mosquito borne diseases.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Fewer predators of mosquitoes (dragon flies? Larvae eating fish, bats). They eat nectar, so something else would have to take their place in pollinisation (probably no problem). Increased population of mosquito prey - livestock, humans. Overall, sounds like a risk worth taking.
- learc83 7y ago
  Their are far more mosquito species that don't bite humans, those species would almost certainly fill the gap.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    But will they still fly around my ears as I’m trying to sleep? If so, in the bin they go.
    - amelius 7y ago
      Use earplugs.
    - wmeredith 7y ago
      Annoying is a far different proposition than plague-spreading.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        If you can solve one, we're not much further from solving the other. People do a lot to solve annoying. Here's Winnipeg Canada's Nuisance Mosquito Fogging Program: https://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/insectcontrol/mosquitoes/nuisanceschedule.stm https://winnipeg.ca/publicworks/insectcontrol/mosquitoes/nui...
    - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      Get over it.
  - ip26 7y ago
Tiktaalik 7y ago
When has humans meddling in ecologies ever worked fine without huge negative side effects?
- cm2012 7y ago
  Off the top of my head: Eliminating hookworm in the USA. Bringing wolves back to Yellowstone.
  - Tiktaalik 7y ago
    We can probably strike wolves off the list since it's a restorative act. In Yellowstone's natural state prior to human intervention it had wolves were part of the ecology. The general way meddling in ecologies goes is that humans remove or add something and the entire ecology becomes grossly distorted. (Eg. Driving Sea Otters to near extinction creates a bloom of Sea Urchins, which devastate ocean habitat of so many other species etc etc)
    - diggernet 7y ago
      Excellent point. Let us also strike eradicating invasive species from the list for being a restorative act. And then proceed with eliminating the Aedes mosquito from most of the places it is now found.
- namdnay 7y ago
  Eradicating smallpox?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Well, let's not celebrate our success on the war just after a battle was won, let's wait for the next battles first. We could have just made things worst and more threatening... https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.reactgroup.org/antibiotic-resistance/the-threat/ https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/
coldtea 7y ago
The fact that we know almost nothing about complex environmental chains and interactions, and we have made huge messes almost any time we attempted to mess with such a system (either on purpose or not). Of course, Earth in the end will be fine (it will reach some other equilibrium), but tons of us might be wiped out in the process.
- jdsully 7y ago
  Can you point to any other species we’ve eradicated that has resulted in a massive human death toll? From my perspective we seem to be pretty good at killing things and getting away with it.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    If those things are creatures like tigers, living in isolated environments, yes. If they are creatures that live all around the environment and play into special roles, then no. E.g. http://sos-bees.org/situation/ http://sos-bees.org/situation/
nine_k 7y ago
We of course should not eradicate all mosquitoes. We need to only eradicate the blood-sucking types. Many mosquitoes do not suck blood; they eat plant products and / or suck plant juices. They could take over the ecological niche of the blood-sucking varieties, and can even be cultivated a little bit to support the local mosquito-eating populations of birds, bats, dragonflies, etc.
emiliobumachar 7y ago
Natural ecosystems are notorious for unintended consequences of intervention.

cnorthwood 7y ago

There's a lot of interesting work in eradicating malaria. Genetically modified mosquitos is one of them, which deserves careful watch https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/mutant-mosquitoes-can-gene-editing-kill-malaria/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas.... The Centre for Effective Altruism looks at ranking charities on effectiveness, and the Against Malaria Foundation always ranks very highly.

tylorr 7y ago
Givewell also ranks that foundation very highly
- Symmetry 7y ago
  Details for people who might want to dig in. https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf
mycall 7y ago
I'm waiting for the laser defense system for my back yard.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  Where is the technology for this? This is an idea I had as a kid, everything I learned about science deems this possible.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    There is a lot of research just lying around, waiting to be used. Check out PEANO-HASEL.
  - mhb 7y ago
    https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_z...

codysan 7y ago

Is there a species as universally loathed as the mosquito?

zabzonk 7y ago
Cockroaches
adrianN 7y ago
All blood sucking insects (e.g. ticks, bedbugs, fleas), all human parasites (e.g. Guinea worm).
cagenut 7y ago
landlords
- amelius 7y ago
  And lawyers, car salesmen, Facebook employees ...
nosianu 7y ago
Bed bugs are a thousand times worse! I can easily protect myself against mosquitoes. It is much - much! - harder to get rid of bed bugs. The last time I had only one or two and it was a nightmare. I spare you the details, there are plenty of anecdotes out there. The net did not help at all. I was lucky to notice that one night when I accidentally had the blanket reversed - the part wehre the feet were, usually, was where my head was for that one night - I got bitten on the upper part of my body instead of the lower one. I immediately put the entire blanket including sheets into a plastic bag and threw it away. I had actually examined the sheet as well as the blanket very carefully and had found nothing. No idea where exactly those tiny critters were hiding, but afterwards I had no more bites. Seriously, with bed bugs you have to take extreme measures. In comparison, all you need against mosquitoes is a net! I learned to like mosquitoes now, given that nightmarish alternative experience with bed bugs. Mosquito bites are much more "friendly" and easier to live with too!
- 7y ago

akkartik 7y ago

Has there been any research into eradicating the Plasmodium parasite, rather than mosquitoes?

_delirium 7y ago
There's a lot of research into anti-Plasmodium drugs in general (because they can be used in treating infected humans), but none have come close to being usable for general environmental dispersal that would try to eliminate the wild reservoir. Mixture of cost, resistance developing too quickly, and effects on other wildlife, so doing something like dropping quinine into forests from planes has never been a real option. This is in general very unlikely to work for diseases that have a significant non-human reservoir. Smallpox was able to be eliminated because it exclusively infects humans, so you only need to eradicate it from human hosts, not also from another extremely populous host like wild mosquitoes. Another approach is to try to genetically engineer mosquitoes resistant to infection and have them replace the unmodified carrier versions, but that's essentially just a variant of the idea to eradicate the carrier-type mosquitoes: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/engineering-malaria-resistance-mosquitoes https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/enginee...

mitchtbaum 7y ago

The fascinating reason why there are no mosquitoes at Disney World http://mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-are-no-mosquitoes-in-disney-world http://mentalfloss.com/article/548281/reason-why-there-are-n... * [Disney (Creator) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/Disney) * [Walt Disney (Creator) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/WaltDisney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/WaltDisney) * [Mr. Alt Disney - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MrAltDisney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MrAltDisney) * [Disney / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Disney) * [Disney Theme Parks (Ride) - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ride/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ride/DisneyThemeParks) * [Disney / Adored By The Network - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AdoredByTheNetwork/Disney https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AdoredByTheNetwork/Di...) * [Disney Theme Parks / YMMV - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DisneyThemeParks) * [Disney Theme Parks / Awesome - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Awesome/DisneyThemeParks https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Awesome/DisneyThemePa...) * ~~~

LeoPanthera 7y ago
tl;dr Carbon Dioxide traps. I have no idea what all the tvtropes links are doing in this comment. Some weird kind of spam maybe?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  They do what they can with CO2 traps, but they'll spray insecticide everywhere if they have to. Some believe the CO2 traps are just used as a guide for when they need to spray/fog, which makes sense.
- weaksauce 7y ago
  Probably a copy paste thing. Formatting looks like markdown for reddit.

gen220 7y ago

I had a sci-fi-plot idea while swatting my nth mosquito on a camping trip last month. What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses instead of harmful ones? Just think about it: no more scheduling appointments for vaccines or flu shots, simply wait outside for 20 minutes in the summer, and before you know it you’re immunized against malaria, measles, etc. Not being a biologist, I have no idea if this is a plausible scenario, but I hope that somebody investigates it! It might be a very cost-effective and democratic method of delivering care. At the very least it’d make for a good black mirror episode :)

coldtea 7y ago
>What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses instead of harmful ones? Yeah, what could go wrong with this? It's not like those "useful viruses" could ever evolve out in the wild to something more threatening!
- gen220 7y ago
  A great sci-fi plot! heh But to be clear, some vaccines are "useful viruses" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine Also gene therapy often uses viruses as a vector for delivery: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures So, it's not too crazy an idea.
  - brooksyd2 7y ago
    I'm not an expert in this area by any means, but my understanding is that vaccines use dead viruses rather than live ones, and they need a particular amount over time. So this wouldn't allow the virus to be passed along by mosquito generations, and you obviously couldn't control the dose amount. So not sure how practical the idea would be.

nickgrosvenor 7y ago

More politicians should campaign on eradicating mosquitoes in their local communities using gene editing. In the last decade Los Angeles has been infested with Aedes mosquitoes. A much more dangerous type than the culex we’re used to. They need much less water to grow eggs, Attack the lower body of humans quickly in short bursts so they’re harder to swat, and can transfer all the dangerous diseases mosquitoes are known for. Very scary and very solvable before it gets out of hand. https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-m...

hanniabu 7y ago
Most of them would opt for the simpler solution of spraying more chemicals everywhere as if they only affect mosquitos
ip26 7y ago
Not only scary & solvable, but eradicating invasive species is also generally considered a safe & ecologically desirable thing.
Luke-Jr 7y ago
Is it indeed possible to eradicate mosquitoes? Outside my house at certain parts of the day, there's tons and it only takes a few seconds to get swarmed. :( What is the latest-and-greatest mosquito extermination tech?
- acdha 7y ago
  We bought some GAT traps to thin the swarms of tiger mosquitos we have in DC and it seems to be working: https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/ https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/ What I really want to mature is the photonic fence but that’s been slow going: https://photonicsentry.com/ https://photonicsentry.com/
- ip26 7y ago
  The sterile-male technique is IMO the latest & greatest. You breed vast quantities of sterile males (which do not bite, only females bite) and release them in an area. They compete with viable males for mates, and the net effect is suppressing the reproduction of the population. It exhibits some very desirable attributes. It's incredibly selective, targeting only one species. It is also self-limiting, there is no feedback loop that could run out of control and there are no chemicals that could accumulate in the environment. For a while the cost of breeding the males was prohibitive but some recent innovation has dropped the cost tremendously.

LeoPanthera 7y ago

I don't know if it's too off-topic but I'd be happy to hijack these comments for a quick discussion of the best way to get rid of mosquitos from around your home. I live in the mountains in California and the little buggers are everywhere. I bought a UV bug zapper without realising that mosquitos are apparently not attracted to UV. I later learned that they are attracted to CO2, but discussion of CO2 traps on the web imply that they also work very poorly. Is there anything that can be usefully done?

nightfly 7y ago
Try and make sure you don't have any pools of stagnant water around. (long lasting puddles, buckets, other random concavities water can collect in.)
- pixl97 7y ago
  It can be very difficult to find them all. Very small amounts of water can host larvae as long as it is persistent. Potted plants that are watered often and outside drip lines for AC's are really common spots for unintended mosquito farms.
- whiddershins 7y ago
  Unless you live on a very large property, the range of the mosquitoes usually far exceed the range of your control over standing water.
  - learc83 7y ago
    That depends on the species. Some species tend to stay within a few hundred feet of their breeding grounds, while others can travel for miles (but even then many will still tend to stay very close by).
- IvyMike 7y ago
  The Aedes mosquitoes that are invading Los Angeles will apparently breed in an upturned bottle cap or "in the depression of a wrinkled old bag of chips that gets hit by a sprinkler.". Good luck finding all pools of water that big on any significant property. (LA Times semi-paywalled article: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-m... )

SubiculumCode 7y ago

Biting mosquitoes is one of the few species I have no qualms about eradicating. Other related species do all the kinds of work in the ecosystem that they do, but without nearly the risk to humans. Eradicate them.

kingkawn 7y ago

A few years ago I decided to stop killing mosquitos. I still swat them, but my aim now is inflict PTSD on them so that they avoid environmental triggers that remind them of me, and all their offspring do the same. How can they learn if we kill them? Has it worked? Prob not, but I feel like I’m doing something new at least.

errantmind 7y ago
Not sure if this is a joke. If not, they 'learn' by not surviving long enough to pass on their genes
- kingkawn 7y ago
  There are numerous behavioral adaptations passed on via epigenetic methylation of the relevant genes in all species, mosquitos included.

Rothnargoth 7y ago

Pretty interesting knowing mosquitoes were weaponized in the past. The irony in the fact this took place in the modern era, and not in medieval times, where they were known for catapulting diseased carcasses.

DoctorBit 7y ago

An interesting article about the US army's fight against malaria in the pacific theater during WW II: https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight-against-malaria-in-the-pacific-theater-1942-45/ https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight-ag... TL;DR: By spraying DDT everywhere, and coercing troops to take Atabrine (that often had nasty side effects), they reduced malaria incidence by about 70%. The Japanese, by contrast had little protection - nearly all Japanese soldiers had malaria at some time.

acdha 7y ago
One caution: pesticides like DDT are more effective at first, before the local population is selected for resistance. The big anti-malaria campaigns in the 1950s tended to report resistance being a significant impediment with a decade: http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/ http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/
- joecool1029 7y ago
  It would be curious to know whether the resistance was just to the killing effect of the mosquito or if it still continued to repel and stop them from biting. One of the huge advantages of DDT over later pesticides is that it stopped them from biting, the other ones keep them biting until they're dead. I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential application to the house (screens, nets, walls). The quantities applied here were much smaller than for agricultural use, and there has never been a study that convincingly showed harm to mammals. (Even the bird egg shell thinning theory was tenuous at best, TEL in leaded fuel could have had the same effect in the targeted time period)
  - _delirium 7y ago
    > I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential application to the house (screens, nets, walls). The international anti-DDT treaty allows countries to take this route, and as a result DDT is still legal for residential use in some countries where malaria is endemic. The US opted for a total ban, though.

oska 7y ago

> The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator The mosquito is a parasite, not a predator. When the author of the book mislabels the ecological niche occupied by the mosquito in the title of his book it gives little confidence in his rigour or level of insight.

ceejayoz 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator > A micropredator attacks more than one host, reducing each host's fitness at least a small amount, and is only in contact with any one host intermittently. This makes them suitable as vectors as they can pass smaller parasites from one host to another. Most micropredators are hematophagic, feeding on blood. They include annelids such as leeches, crustaceans such as branchiurans and gnathiid isopods, various dipterans such as mosquitoes and tsetse flies, other arthropods such as fleas and ticks, vertebrates such as lampreys, and mammals such as vampire bats. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is-a-mosquito-feeding-on-human-blood-not-a-parasite https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is-a-m... > A mosquito is a biological parasite, it is not a medical parasite. Plus, it's a figure of speech talking about the fact that they kill a lot of us humans.
- oska 7y ago
  I question the redefinition of predator, an organism that hunts and consumes its prey, in this term micropredator. I wonder how accepted and widespread its use is. And the author doesn't use this much more restricted term. He didn't title his book A Human History of Our Deadliest Micropredator. Because he's going for sensationalism, as is more fully demonstrated in quotes from the book given later in the article: > In total, Winegard estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans who have ever lived. He calls them “our apex predator,” “the destroyer of worlds,” and “the ultimate agent of historical change.” To your own assertion that mosquitoes kill a lot of humans - they only do so indirectly as a vector for disease. This is a very important distinction - if we are going to eradicate anything it would be better to eradicate the microbial killer parasites they carry, such as Plasmodium falciparum, not the carriers themselves (which are an important food source for many actual predators).

chovy 7y ago

https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky-mosquitos-in-the-backyard/ https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky-mosqu...

aussieguy1234 7y ago

Here's one solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive The costs are so low that even a developing country could afford to do it, at a cost way lower than mosquito control by other methods. Sure there are unknown consequences, but that probably won't stop them if their fellow countrymen are dying.