I’m no expert in biology, not my science as I dropped it after highschool, so I’m not going to pretend I know much, I’m merely hypothesising.
But I do know that removing large parts of bio-mass from the ecosystem will have consequences that need to be considered.
As far as I’ve read about sterile mosquito introduction is that it’s an attempt at population reduction not extermination. I’m guessing this will allow the experts in this field to study the effect this effort has on mosquito populations, malaria rates, and other insect and mosquito predator populations.
Also our understanding of biology has come on leaps and bounds and I expect that within the next 50 years (barring a catastrophic event that impacts humanity) we’ll have much more control over the ecosystem and I hope that allows us to improve human life and be better stewards of the environment.
Iirc part of the reason for sterile releases is to shift the populations. So for example they release them for malaria-carrying sub-populations but leave intact clean populations to fill in the niche.
There’s also some experimentation with releasing fully fertile specimens that have a specific gut bacteria which makes them unable to carry some of the diseases impacting humans, and is passed down to the young.
Oh like a plague of locus? Interesting, so the people that are introducing infertile mates into the swarm have they evaluated such risk?
I’m no expert in biology, not my science as I dropped it after highschool, so I’m not going to pretend I know much, I’m merely hypothesising.
But I do know that removing large parts of bio-mass from the ecosystem will have consequences that need to be considered.
As far as I’ve read about sterile mosquito introduction is that it’s an attempt at population reduction not extermination. I’m guessing this will allow the experts in this field to study the effect this effort has on mosquito populations, malaria rates, and other insect and mosquito predator populations.
Also our understanding of biology has come on leaps and bounds and I expect that within the next 50 years (barring a catastrophic event that impacts humanity) we’ll have much more control over the ecosystem and I hope that allows us to improve human life and be better stewards of the environment.
Iirc part of the reason for sterile releases is to shift the populations. So for example they release them for malaria-carrying sub-populations but leave intact clean populations to fill in the niche.
There’s also some experimentation with releasing fully fertile specimens that have a specific gut bacteria which makes them unable to carry some of the diseases impacting humans, and is passed down to the young.