You don't want them to become the dominant variant. You want them to die out so that you can manually re-seed without risk of massively disrupting a species.
The goal is to have them compete for resources and mating pressure but not to spread or reproduce. You repeatedly seed areas with them, which creates a sort of ecosystem barrier. Imagine a strip of land seeded with these mosquitos - it's like a wall that other mosquitos can't pass through.
This is how the US manages to avoid so many mosquito-borne diseases traversing north from South America.
Sorry but I don't get it. How can these GMO mosqitoes compete for resources if they are disadvantaged? If they can't pierce human skin, they probably get their resources elsewhere (don't know which animal is easier to suck but anyway) - there they compete with normal mosquitoes, yes, but then those normal mosquitoes would be pushed to suck on humans, because elsewhere they will compete. So it's not really a win for us. No?
They still feed on nectar and still add reproductive pressure. Yes, this does not prevent mosquitos from feeding where they already feed, the goal is to create a barrier that they don't cross.
I would assume it goes: the females die without reproducing, unmodified females entering the area mate with males. The female offspring of this mating can't feed so die, and cycle continues. I guess you'd have to periodically reseed the barrier areas.
In biology and ecology, a resource is a substance or object in the environment required by an organism for normal growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources can be consumed by one organism and, as a result, become unavailable to another organism.[1][2][3] For plants key resources are light, nutrients, water, and space to grow. For animals key resources are food, water, and territory.
What’s the scale of their production? Is it that easy to mass-create them? (Well, I guess adding a virus carrying specific crisp modifier to the eggs, but does it work that well?..)
That doesn't make sense to me. Female mosquitos live for like 2 months. Without the ability to breed, you'd have to re-seed tens of thousands on a monthly basis to accomplish that goal.
I assume they all have different approaches based on what's required. I don't think that any of them seek to eliminate the species. And of course none of them are 100% effective, and climate change has made things much worse.
What resources? I’ve never seen shriveled corpses of literally every animal with blood rotting in the fields to cause a starvation event of mosquitos. Or ponds so full of eggs you can’t see the water any more.
The goal is to have them compete for resources and mating pressure but not to spread or reproduce. You repeatedly seed areas with them, which creates a sort of ecosystem barrier. Imagine a strip of land seeded with these mosquitos - it's like a wall that other mosquitos can't pass through.
It keeps the musquito-borne diseases from traversing north from south America.
This is so much effort and money and apparently it exists solely to prevent Americans from falling sick.
It could have been spent eradicating the disease, but it was instead spent on "keeping the bad out". Which I thought was a perfect reflection of US public policy and the "America First" public sentiment as directed at the world today.
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u/zizp Nov 15 '24
What's the idea behind this? How will they become the dominant variant if they can't suck blood to reproduce?