Comment on Horrors We've Unleashed

• ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  All of our best data on the impact says that it really wouldn’t matter. Sometimes a species is a linchpin for the ecosystem, and sometimes it isn’t.

  Sucks for mosquitoes, but there’s a very real chance that we’ll smallpox them, and the biggest concern will be our confidence that the virus we use doesn’t impact other species unintentionally.

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  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hopefully we can do the same for bedbugs. Fuck bedbugs. I can smell the little fuckers

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    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hey, at least pubic lice are going extinct!

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      • Cadeillac@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I read that as public. I was pretty confused as to what you were talking about

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      • TrenchcoatFullofBats@belfry.rip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oh no! My patriotic merkin startup plans are ruined! I guess 'MericaMerkins was never meant to be…

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  • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Haven’t read closely on it, but I’ve seen plenty of articles about the lack of effect we’d see over killing off mosquitoes. I have a feeling that, along with what you said, it’s because they’re tiny.

    Consider the dragonfly. They hunt mosquitoes efficiently. But relative to their size, a mosquito is like us eating a candy bar, or even less. Meanwhile, they could snatch about anything else and it would be like a 3-pound steak.

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    • Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Now that you say that, average us candy bar has 200…250 kcal a piece on average. That’s about 1/7th of BMR of an average healthy male.

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• protist@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They’re largely applying this technique to invasive species of mosquitoes, eg Aedes aegypti, which is a potent vector of disease and native of Africa that has spread worldwide only within the past 200 years

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• OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They also eat nectar and are pollinators of various plants.

  There’s no way we could simply remove a creature as numerous and widespread as mosquitoes without any consequences.

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• Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If we were to somehow magically remove mosquitos from existence in an instant, we’d better hope something fills their ecological niche quickly

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  • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nothing eats them exclusively, that I know of. And they’re tiny. Any insectivore is getting far more nutrition out of about anything else.

    Maybe I’m wrong, but biologists seem to think eradication is a non-issue.

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  • smeg@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the purpose of the original genetic modification is to make them unable to bite humans (and spread malaria) but to otherwise leave them capable of feeding, thus not wiping them out and upsetting the ecosystem they’re part of

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  • MelastSB@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That niche being flying bloodsucker? I’m not sure the alternative will be any better

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    • Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The niche being food for fish that share their ecosystem in larval stages, and birds/bats/frogs that share their ecosystem in their adult stage.

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• mihor@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Found the mosquito.

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