Mosquitoes control human populations, an invasive species. Removing mosquitoes will make humans proliferate, which is known to be environmentally damaging.
Joking aside, the consensus seems to be that the effect of removing disease-carrying mosquitoes (not all mosquitoes) from the environment is minor compared to how many lives it can save.
Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa so removing it from the environment everywhere else in the world that it has been spread to would benefit the local mosquito species which don't spread the same diseases and are less of a nuisance to humans.
Lots of animals eat mosquitos, but they really aren't the primary food source of any species, especially this particular type of mosquito. It would have a very minimal effect on food supply.
There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.
The mere existence of other things that we call mosquitos does not mean they are all interchangeable as a food source for the animals that eat them.
Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?
Most things that eat mosquitoes are actually in the business of eating any flying insect that fits in their mouth. I'd be a bit more worried about, e.g. a species being the only pollinator for some plant, but that's pretty unlikely. Do the studies, sure, but don't expect any bombshells. And if aedes aegypti or any of the other big disease-causing mosquitoes had such a role, I'm pretty sure it would have already been found and trumpeted to the heavens.
> The idea that ecosystems carry plenty of backup, so if a small number of species become extinct there is little harm, has been greatly overestimated, according to the largest global study of its kind.
The fact you can't even confidently say whether one of those species is a sole pollinator of a plant or not indicates that your comment is still just a stack of assumptions.
And yours is still just fearmongering supposition, with, in my opinion, even less basis in reality. Go find some actual research on the ecological roles of aedes aegypti and anopheles if you want to get out of the loop. :)
Do we not know because people haven't gone looking, or because they did go looking and didn't find it? I'm guessing it's the latter, in which case it kinda strengthens the case that there probably isn't some critical role. These are some of the more-studied animals on the planet.
Pointing out risk is a kind of fearmongering when it's technically real but too small to be worth worrying about. Asteroid impact is a real risk too.
I find analogies like this revealing (in the negative sense) of the level of thoughtfulness of bio-engineering advocates. Do you actually think this is an apt analogy? If so, you are not even remotely understanding the problem in front of us. If not, then are you just disingenuously deploying it and you’re unable to conjure up a more apt analogy?
In either case, it’s good evidence as to why I’m not comfortable accepting your prior stack of assumptions. The un-evidenced assumptions that come from a person who thinks asteroid strike risk is remotely similar to gene drives are frankly completely dismissible on their face.
In any case: Yes, you’re right that looking a lot and not finding anything does strengthen the argument there’s nothing to be found. How much? How much certainty do we need? Are there other cheap vectors by which to gain more certainty?
Acting like we have these answers and then saying “hopefully there no pollinators & it’s like an asteroid strike risk!” is seriously discrediting.
Is there a standard of evidence that would convince you it's ok to eliminate aedes aegypti? How much more evidence would it take? Or is your answer "no" regardless?
(And the asteroid strike thing was only an analogy for remote risk and the definition of fearmongering, not biotech in particular.)
The best evidence there is so far is that of the limited tests we've done on islands, and that gets pretty close to convincing me.
An answer like "we should roll out limited tests and incrementally understand the impact" would be a good one.
"there are other things called mosquitos" is not a good one.
Deciding here, without sufficient evidence, whether I'm OK with eliminating aedes aegypti would be frankly bizarre and totally unnecessary.
Similar to the prior point: the fact that advocates try to advocate for the end state and not, you know, propose ways to de-risk incremental learning, is discrediting.
> An answer like "we should roll out limited tests and incrementally understand the impact" would be a good one.
Luckily this is in progress and all we're likely to see for a bit. It's at least good to hear that it's possible to convince you.
Anyway, you're awfully concerned with "discrediting". I'm not pretending to have credit. I'm just a guy who tries to learn stuff in between surviving. But as long as we're on the topic, your consistently antagonistic reads of my comments don't do you any "credit" either.
If you recall, my very first question to you was whether you have actual knowledge of the underlying facts or are just making assumptions like "we call other creatures 'mosquitos' so their predators can probably just eat them."
Instead of responding "no, I do not know," you responded with an additional set of unfounded assumptions and then accused me of fearmongering for asking literally the most basic epistemological question there is: "do you know this, or are you assuming this?"
Throwing your lot in with "let's do irreversible extinctions of some species based on my zero expertise" doesn't really deserve a generous read, I'm afraid.
It's okay (in fact, desirable) to simply not come to a conclusion on questions where we don't have enough information yet.
"Invasive" is a made up human concept. The question is whether there are species that now rely on these as a food source. The entire natural world is a hodge-podge of "invasive" species coming from some nearby land, disrupting the ecosystem, then the ecosystem evolving around it – typically a gradual process over thousands of years.
If it took a couple hundred years for this species to proliferate, it's absolutely plausible that eradicating it in a few years will have surprising second- and third-order effects.
“Invasive” is a useful concept to describe species that spent millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of years evolving in one environment and then moving to a new one in the last few thousand years.
Do you understand that time scales are important here?
There are also species that have invaded areas that are totally impossible for them to reach without seafaring or airfaring human civilizations to carry them.
All terms are made up. Some are useful and some are not. This one is useful.
The usefulness of the term to this conversation is as described: is this species systemically critical to its current ("invaded") ecosystem?
Merely calling it invasive does not answer that question, ergo it is not a useful term in this conversation.
And yes, timescales do matter. A species can become critical to its new ("invaded") ecosystem within a few hundred years such that removing it within a few years will cause catastrophe.
And now we’ve come full circle to the uselessness of this label.
A species evolving in Area A and migrating to Area B is extremely common.
Camels, horses, marsupials, elephants, cats, opossums, New World monkeys, and even Homo sapiens all evolved in regions different than where they are found now.
Once they’re integrated into their ecosystems we just don’t refer to them as invasive. But calling something invasive or not doesn’t affect their ecosystem integration, causality works in reverse.
So the relevant question is, again, whether these have become critical to their now-local ecosystems.
> And now we’ve come full circle to the uselessness of this label.
No, we've come to a point where you've moved the goalposts and refuse to support an assertion you made by answering a simple question.
> Camels, horses, marsupials, elephants, cats, opossums, New World monkeys, and even Homo sapiens all evolved in regions different than where they are found now.
All of this seems to stem from you not understanding what "invasive species" means, and, apparently, refusing to just Google it.
Invasive species have to be introduced by humans and harmful to the environment. Some of the things you listed fit that definition and some don't.
But regardless, you haven't given any evidence that eradicating those things from their new environment would harm that environment.
Dude... The definition of invasive is not that it's introduced by humans. It is that it's harmful to the environment. Therefore a non-native species that instantly integrates or has since become integrated with its environment is not considered invasive. Your question is tautological.
"Can you name an invasive species that was integrated successfully into its new environment?" No! Because we don't label those things invasive.
But again, the label does not change the environmental effects, the environmental effects change the label.
The question being asked, which you continue not to answer, is whether these particular species are integrated within their new environments or not. Simply saying that they are invasive and they've only been there for 400 years does not answer that question.
Sure: Asian elephants are broadly regarded as a keystone species in their environments today despite not being native to Asia.
I’m not going to bother with this anymore because you won’t do even the first ten seconds of a fact check on yourself. Look up the definition yourself.
In places where it's been living for hundreds of years, that's a legitimate concern.
In Europe though, where aedes aegypti didn't exist 20 years ago, it's probably the other way around: what did the introduction of this new species damage? (apart from making the summer unbearable outside if any of your neighbour isn't very strict with standing water elimination)
A billion human lives, or some sad trout who have to eat fruit flies instead. For me, it’s an obvious choice.
I just can’t understand the level of smugness it must take to insist that we must force another billion people to die of horrible diseases like malaria, because you want the moral high ground. How do you even tell yourself that killing all those people is the moral high ground?
> "Your saying we do things that save human lives, irrespective of the outcome?"
In fact, no, they did not say that. They said that the considered balance of the merits strongly favors eradicating the 2% of mosquito species that carry human diseases for someone who gives greater weight to the benefit of saving a billion human lives[0] than to the cost of some trout eating the thousands of other mosquito species instead.
[0] - 700 million contracted mosquito-borne illnesses each year worldwide. Death isn't the only consequence of significance.
If we take just the good parts of this and compare it with just the bad parts for that, we can go really far before crashing against reality at incredible speed. But cherry picking is a lot of fun and two can play this game:
Can you assure that saving this 20,000 humans will not mean one million humans starving and dying later when their main source of proteins (fisheries) will vanish forever by lack of mosquitoes and introduction of mosquito fishes (those pesky fish egg eaters)?. Wouldn't choose to save one million babies, you? Wow, that's evil. Think in the babies, people!
You should probably stop doing anything then, because you can't prove you getting out of bed in the morning won't lead to the destruction of society. You can't assure me it won't!
Even us filtering water for drinking has downstream effects which may ultimately cause harm which can't be entirely unproven. I guess we should just stop drinking clean water!
There are tons of things we just ultimately choose to do or allow to happen which can have potential issues we may never even know are happening until its way too late. Ruminating on maybes we have no way to even measure or know or simulate isn't exactly useful. What are the likelihoods of those outcomes? Pretty dang small based on our current knowledge? What are the likliehoods of tons of people dying or being seriously injured from these diseases? Extremely high?
I totally understand there's a massive amount of unknowns about this. Let's continue analyzing what's the right course of action as we go, and ensure we're taking that understanding into account of what we do in the future.
In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.
There are many mosquito species in competition for the same resources, only a few (iirc 10% in the US) of which sting humans and carry diseases. Wiping out the ones that attack people would allow other mosquitoes to take over the ecological niches.
Are you proposing that it would be infinitely bad? That somehow extincting a few varieties of mosquitoes could cause the collapse of all life on earth?
I don't get the "but what if it's somewhat - not infinitely - bad" argument? The known good is so dramatically good that we'd need a shocking amount of unknown bad to have made it not worth it. But if I'm choosing between mosquitoes, and say... fish, frogs, and a variety of birds, yes, get rid of the mosquitoes.
I am merely suggesting we don't really understand the consequences and things may not be as simplistic that everyone thinks. i.e. kill "bad guy" mosquitos, save a billion people.
We start spraying crops so we can end world hunger (or just make more money) and screwing around with other things and now we're killing bees and other things. This will ultimately come to haunt us.
The death of all bees would count as infinitely bad (in terms of crop pollination) and we're doing a very good job in making that happen.
We do know the consequences. Wealthier nations have essentially eliminated 99%+ of the population of the few species of disease carrying mosquitoes in many broad areas. The effect on the ecosystem was not noticeable. Using cheaper methods to help poorer areas will save 10's of millions of lives and eliminate billions of cases of disease. It's overwhelmingly worth it even if it caused ecological harm. To not do this is, to even fight against doing it is, IMO, immoral.
Probably because those ecosystems were not here anymore, as they were bulldozed to remove the mosquitoes.
The whole aquatic ecosystems were destroyed. There is hardly anything more noticeable than that. You believe that there was not any effects on survival of migrant aquatic birds, local fisheries, extinction of endemic fishes, frogs and aquatic plants, local microclimate, or management of water reservoirs?
Then why wealthier nations are massively trying to restore this habitats again to protect themselves from floods, restore biodiversity and assure their water supply?
Meta: I feel a bit sad to see this is light grey for me due to the number of "down votes" it's had. The question is in good faith, and you may think the answer is no, but down voting good faith discussion about the implications of tech doesn't help foster the open discussion vibe that makes hacker news special.
That's exactly what I was trying to achieve. Some people stepped forward and explained one side and some explained the other side. I learnt something which is the point.
Others just downvoted me because they disagreed (which is not what you're supposed to do, afaik).
I don't even want to engage anymore as others just think I want a billion people to die to save some 'bad' mosquitos, which is obviously a ridiculous statement.
Does anything eat them as food? Wouldn't it be environmentally damaging to remove a source of food for X?