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Mosquitoes are a major pollinator.

by soperj 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago
We can always re-introduce them if it becomes a problem.
- throwaway823882 6y ago
  I'm sure the rest of the ecosystem will just wait around for a few decades while we begin to repopulate them...
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    I'm not sure it would be so bad. Mosquitoes breed prodigiously and I'm sure they'd be back in no time.
jjk166 6y ago
There are thousands of mosquito species and only a few dozen spread diseases to humans, of which only 3 make up the vast majority. Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems.
- awb 6y ago
  > Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems. I'm not going to ask you to prove a negative, but it sure sounds like it's going against all the advice I've heard about ecology. Namely that ecosystems are far more complex than we understand and that even small changes can compound into larger changes. Basically: don't play God. If this is safe and it does work, then it might be helpful to have some new messaging about when and where we can start actively designing ecosystems. "Don't mess with mother nature" is easy to understand. So, how would you create a new maxim that preserve that general rules but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    “How would you create a new maxim that preserves that general rule but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?” “We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    It's not like we're snapping our fingers and making an irreversible change to the whole planet. We can and have been testing this process in isolated cases and if anything unexpected happens we can stop the process and reintroduce the species, but we actually do have a pretty good understanding of ecosystems. Mother nature does not have your best interests at heart, and decisions that affect the lives of millions should not be made based off short maxims.
    - coding123 6y ago
      Famous last words.
    - awb 6y ago
      > We can and have been testing this process in isolated cases Anytime you jump from the lab to the real world it's going to be different. And each ecosystem in the country and state will be slightly different. > if anything unexpected happens we can stop the process and reintroduce the species Has this been done before with insects though? This sounds a lot harder than reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone that are small enough in number that they can be monitored.
  - hackeraccount 6y ago
    "Don't mess with markets" is easy to understand. That said people are perfectly willing to mess with them in ways both large and small. Sometimes they have a guiding maxim and sometimes they just say it's a self-evident action that will outweigh any downside. I suspect the truth is that in both cases it comes down to who is going to benefit - with it more likely to happen if the "who" is either a large number or a small number with a lot of influence and the "benefit" is something that's immediately apparent to the winners and not immediately apparent to the people who lose in the intervention.
gus_massa 6y ago
Note that this is not like DDT that will kill all the mosquitoes (and everything that looks like a mosquito, and many more animals). This is only against Aedes aegypti that is responsible for most of the transmissions and is not a native specie of Florida.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  Right. Aedes aegypti is native to Africa (as one might guess from the name), and is essentially an invasive species elsewhere in the world. If anything, wiping them out should push the local ecosystem back toward its normal state, as the native species of mosquito (of which there are many) would face less competition from the invasive Aedes aegypti.

Mosquitoes are a major pollinator.

by soperj 6y ago

Mosquitoes are a major pollinator.

BitwiseFool 6y ago

We can always re-introduce them if it becomes a problem.

throwaway823882 6y ago
I'm sure the rest of the ecosystem will just wait around for a few decades while we begin to repopulate them...
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I'm not sure it would be so bad. Mosquitoes breed prodigiously and I'm sure they'd be back in no time.

jjk166 6y ago

There are thousands of mosquito species and only a few dozen spread diseases to humans, of which only 3 make up the vast majority. Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems.

awb 6y ago
> Eradicating the disease carriers would have minimal effects on the ecosystems. I'm not going to ask you to prove a negative, but it sure sounds like it's going against all the advice I've heard about ecology. Namely that ecosystems are far more complex than we understand and that even small changes can compound into larger changes. Basically: don't play God. If this is safe and it does work, then it might be helpful to have some new messaging about when and where we can start actively designing ecosystems. "Don't mess with mother nature" is easy to understand. So, how would you create a new maxim that preserve that general rules but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  “How would you create a new maxim that preserves that general rule but also accommodates eliminating undesirable subspecies?” “We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand.
- jjk166 6y ago
  It's not like we're snapping our fingers and making an irreversible change to the whole planet. We can and have been testing this process in isolated cases and if anything unexpected happens we can stop the process and reintroduce the species, but we actually do have a pretty good understanding of ecosystems. Mother nature does not have your best interests at heart, and decisions that affect the lives of millions should not be made based off short maxims.
  - coding123 6y ago
    Famous last words.
  - awb 6y ago
    > We can and have been testing this process in isolated cases Anytime you jump from the lab to the real world it's going to be different. And each ecosystem in the country and state will be slightly different. > if anything unexpected happens we can stop the process and reintroduce the species Has this been done before with insects though? This sounds a lot harder than reintroducing wolves at Yellowstone that are small enough in number that they can be monitored.
- hackeraccount 6y ago
  "Don't mess with markets" is easy to understand. That said people are perfectly willing to mess with them in ways both large and small. Sometimes they have a guiding maxim and sometimes they just say it's a self-evident action that will outweigh any downside. I suspect the truth is that in both cases it comes down to who is going to benefit - with it more likely to happen if the "who" is either a large number or a small number with a lot of influence and the "benefit" is something that's immediately apparent to the winners and not immediately apparent to the people who lose in the intervention.

gus_massa 6y ago

Note that this is not like DDT that will kill all the mosquitoes (and everything that looks like a mosquito, and many more animals). This is only against Aedes aegypti that is responsible for most of the transmissions and is not a native specie of Florida.

Turing_Machine 6y ago
Right. Aedes aegypti is native to Africa (as one might guess from the name), and is essentially an invasive species elsewhere in the world. If anything, wiping them out should push the local ecosystem back toward its normal state, as the native species of mosquito (of which there are many) would face less competition from the invasive Aedes aegypti.