I love mosquitos!
Remember, they suck blood because they need elements thereof in order to reproduce. Engineering that out is unlikely unless you can find them another source thereof. AND get them to prefer it, which is a huge problem.
The most complicated collateral damage would be the elimination of some mosquito-borne diseases, which might remove population limits on other species. A new equilibrium would be reached eventually, but it might or might not be one we prefer.
âLess well adapted speciesâ â Yâknow, there arenât many of those, almost by definition, unless youâre talking about a very specific one-on-one competition for niches in the ecosystemâŚ
I think youâre imagining a different definition of âless well adaptedâ than I envision; I mean simply that some species thrive more than others and tend to live in greater numbers compared to those that are extinct or on the endangered species list. I just donât see any evidence of us actually being able to kill off all the mosquitoes. Humans have been around about 400,000 years and mosquitoes have been around for about 80,000,000 years. Iâm pretty sure that in many locations, humanity has given killing off mosquitoes a pretty valiant effort (and have failed). Furthermore, I doubt any pesticide (bug zapper / whatever) effective enough to kill off all the mosquitoes wouldnât also immediately kill off a whole bunch of insect species. Last I have heard, we have population issues with bees, which are also pollinators. This is assuming the mosquitoes donât adapt like antibiotic resistant bacteria. I donât see how trying to genetically engineer a replacement species is any less of a moonshot.
In south florida, mosquitoes used to asphyxiate the cows (like, the 20âs). Now, there are a lot of mosquito controls to take care of it.
This topic was automatically closed after 4 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
