750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys

[hordak]

750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys | CNN

A plan to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in 2021 has won final approval from authorities in the Florida Keys, despite the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups.

www.cnn.com

A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The proposal had already won state and federal approval.

The mosquito, named OX5034, has been altered to produce female offspring that die in the larval stage, well before hatching and growing large enough to bite and spread disease. Only the female mosquito bites for blood, which she needs to mature her eggs. Males feed only on nectar, and are thus not a carrier for disease.

if we survive to 2021, that is.....

 

[Mobius 1]

It's 2020, so watch out for a mutation that will allow them to carry COVID-19.

 

[Fat4all]

if this stops just ONE mosquito from buzzing near my ear ONE TIME, then it will be for the greater good

 

[BasilZero]

Twitter rage about Bill Gates Microsoft chips in mosquitoes... 3....2....1...

 

[ILikeFeet]

it's florida, this will fuck up somehow. everything in florida fucks up

 

[I am a Bird]

I thought this plan failed the last time it was tested.

 

[Grym]

Life...uh...finds a way....

 

[FliX]

Fuck mosquitos....
However I've seen too many b-horror-movies to see where this is going....

Do ticks next please, probably worse than mosquitos

 

[Lord Fanny]

Sounds like a plot from the 1960s Batman TV show where Joker gets elected Mayor or something and does everything he can to fuck stuff up

 

[psynergyadept]

👀👀👀

WHAT!?!?!!!

 

[Quad Lasers]

Uh, I'm reading through that CNN story. So the idea is that over the long haul because females keep dying at birth, mosquito populations would eventually get wiped out?

Wouldn't that massively fuck up the ecology if mosquitos just started disappearing?

 

[El Bombastico]

What this literally the plot of that movie Mimic?

 

[Einchy]

This has been done in a bunch of locations for years, last I heard (like 6 years ago) it ended up working really well and nothing got fucked up.

 

[kyle mechlachlan]

Uh, I'm reading through that CNN story. So the idea is that over the long haul because females keep dying at birth, mosquito populations would eventually get wiped out?

Wouldn't that massively fuck up the ecology if mosquitos just started disappearing?

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure no. Mosquitos aren't required to exist in the food chain.

 

[hordak]

Uh, I'm reading through that CNN story. So the idea is that over the long haul because females keep dying at birth, mosquito populations would eventually get wiped out? Wouldn't that massively fuck up the ecology if mosquitos just started disappearing?

Click to shrink...

Apparently there's like 3,000 species of mosquitos and only a few hundred suck blood, so if they only do one in Florida, it shouldn't backfire. At all.

What this literally the plot of that movie Mimic?

Click to shrink...

i think that was cocroaches. Fuck cockroaches.

 

[ILikeFeet]

This has been done in a bunch of locations for years, last I heard (like 6 years ago) it ended up working really well and nothing got fucked up.

Click to shrink...

yet

 

[kickz]

This is where the Zombie COVID apocalypse starts

 

[zswordsman]

Watch it mutate into the real life mosquito version of a Cazador from Fallout.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Uh, I'm reading through that CNN story. So the idea is that over the long haul because females keep dying at birth, mosquito populations would eventually get wiped out?

Wouldn't that massively fuck up the ecology if mosquitos just started disappearing?

Click to shrink...

nope, nobody likes them and nobody needs them

Removing malaria-carrying mosquitoes unlikely to affect ecosystems, says report

By combining studies on one species of malaria-carrying mosquito, researchers found that no other animals rely solely on them for food.

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[MadLaughter]

 

[Joseph Elsbernd]

Pretty sure no. Mosquitos aren't required to exist in the food chain.

Click to shrink...

That is wrong. There a tons of things that eat mosquitos and their larvae. Elminating the mosquito species will have consequences. The internet has been spreading the whole "if they all died nothing would change! lol" for years.

 

[Nilou]

It's Florida, I'm sure one of them will accidentally be injected with the T Virus and then we'll all be doomed.

 

[Joseph Elsbernd]

nope, nobody likes them and nobody needs them

Removing malaria-carrying mosquitoes unlikely to affect ecosystems, says report

By combining studies on one species of malaria-carrying mosquito, researchers found that no other animals rely solely on them for food.

www.sciencedaily.com

Click to shrink...

They evaluated only 1 species of mosquito, to which there are many. And while I do believe their claim that no other animal relies solely on them, the fact that some animals do rely on them to some extent will have consequences.

 

[SeeingeyeDug]

That is wrong. There a tons of things that eat mosquitos and their larvae. Elminating the mosquito species will have consequences. The internet has been spreading the whole "if they all died nothing would change! lol" for years.

Click to shrink...

what animal requires mosquitos and only mosquitos to survive? their larva will still exist for food. They die before the full mosquito stage.

 

[Nabs]

The beginning of a terrifying sci fi movie.

 

[Deleted member 12833]

I'm okay with wiping mosquitoes from the world

 

[Vigamox]

Didn't they already try something similar to this in Brazil and it failed?

From 2013 to 2015, an English biotech company released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into neighborhoods in Jacobina, Brazil, in an effort to reduce the number of native disease-carrying mosquitoes. But unexpectedly, some of the gene-edited mosquitoes passed on their genes to the native insects, fueling concerns that they created a more robust hybrid species, according to new findings.

Click to shrink...

From: https://www.livescience.com/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-create-hybrids.html

 

[Marshall]

So shortsighted. Bats, birds and other animals rely on mosquitos as part of their diet. Eliminate mosquitos and we may see adverse effects up the food chain.

Put on mosquito repellent you giant pussy.

 

[onyx]

So what's going to stop these new genes from being passed on and mutating to cause more harm than good?

 

[Einchy]

So shortsighted. Bats, birds and other animals rely on mosquitos as part of their diet. Eliminate mosquitos and we may see adverse effects up the food chain.

Put on mosquito repellent you giant pussy.

Click to shrink...

This is about saving the millions of people who die because of them, it's not about eliminating a mild inconvenience.

 

[ErnieMcCracken]

So shortsighted. Bats, birds and other animals rely on mosquitos as part of their diet. Eliminate mosquitos and we may see adverse effects up the food chain.

Put on mosquito repellent you giant pussy.

Click to shrink...

Fuck mosquitos. They can expand their diet like a 5 year old needs to.

 

[Castamere]

 

[Loanshark]

So shortsighted. Bats, birds and other animals rely on mosquitos as part of their diet. Eliminate mosquitos and we may see adverse effects up the food chain.

Put on mosquito repellent you giant pussy.

Click to shrink...

That is wrong. There a tons of things that eat mosquitos and their larvae. Elminating the mosquito species will have consequences. The internet has been spreading the whole "if they all died nothing would change! lol" for years.

Click to shrink...

I remember looking into this a few years back, and as far as I remember, even the animals with the highest proportion of mosquitos in their diets were still under 5% total, which was deemed basically insignificant by biologists.

Anyway, next up should be ticks.

 

[Pancoar]

Fuck mosquitoes.

Can this be done to fleas and ticks too?

 

[WestEgg]

So shortsighted. Bats, birds and other animals rely on mosquitos as part of their diet. Eliminate mosquitos and we may see adverse effects up the food chain.

Put on mosquito repellent you giant pussy.

Click to shrink...

If I recall, mosquitos have been determined to be a nonvital part of basically every ecosystem they are found in and their removal isn't harmful. Bats and birds don't really eat them much, and mosquitos also fuck with other animals.

 

[Deleted member 3010]

I'm all for mosquitos fucking off, so yeah whatever it take I guess.

Here's just hoping this won't have any blowback against humans of any kind, post-release.

 

[Wraith]

 

[Deleted member 4367]

Didn't they already try something similar to this in Brazil and it failed?



From: https://www.livescience.com/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-create-hybrids.html

Click to shrink...

Shit they made super mosquitos on accident?

 

[Pikachu]

Wait is the idea supposed to be that all the real male mosquitos will have babies with these fake ones and then they'll just go extinct? lol

 

[-COOLIO-]

I'm for mosquitos fucking off, but this is playing god.

Click to shrink...

we've played god in various ways for thousands of years and it's been great. we should absolutely keep playing god.

 

[h1nch]

I hope this works. Fuck mosquitos.

 

[SRG01]

Uh, I'm reading through that CNN story. So the idea is that over the long haul because females keep dying at birth, mosquito populations would eventually get wiped out?

Wouldn't that massively fuck up the ecology if mosquitos just started disappearing?

Click to shrink...

Mosquitos currently occupy zero critical niches in any food chain. Its absence will be reoccupied by existing insects.

 

[Marshall]

This is about saving the millions of people who die because of them, it's not about eliminating a mild inconvenience.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I take back my flippant comment above. The human loss to malaria and other maladies due to mosquitos can't be under stated. Sometimes I post before thinking it through.

That said, I do think we should be careful with this.

 

[Ryuhza]

Fuck them mosquitos

 

[Xterrian]

Not sure how I feel about humanity intentionally wanting to wipe out an entire family of insects.


And before you say "well they kill many people every year," it'd be wayyyy more beneficial to actually go after the disease(s) instead.

But hey I'm not a scientist.

 

[Chopchop]

Hopefully this doesn't create unintended consequences.

 

[Nemesis121]

I live in NJ, we have tons of blood sucking fuckers, Florida you can have them..

 

[tokkun]

Wait is the idea supposed to be that all the real male mosquitos will have babies with these fake ones and then they'll just go extinct? lol

Click to shrink...

No. All the genetically-engineered mosquitoes they release are males. The idea is that the engineered males will compete with the non-engineered males for the existing females.

In older experiments, they would release sterile males, so they would mate but not produce any offspring. That would cause a one-off reduction in populations, but they would eventually grow back normally.

This newer approach is to release males who are not completely sterile, but that can only have other engineered males as offspring. This way the cycle keeps repeating, and the number of females decreases with each successive generation.

 

[Imperfected]

I remember looking into this a few years back, and as far as I remember, even the animals with the highest proportion of mosquitos in their diets were still under 5% total, which was deemed basically insignificant by biologists.

Anyway, next up should be ticks.

Click to shrink...

Basically, yeah. The nutritional value of mosquitoes is ridiculously poor, so the only thing that uses them as a primary food source that I'm aware of is a specific sort of semi-carnivorous pitcher plant and one very unique type of frog.

 

[badcrumble]

Pretty sure no. Mosquitos aren't required to exist in the food chain.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, mosquitos aren't a necessary part of the food chain, but the overall die-off of insect biomass around the planet scares the shit out of me.