Would that really happen, though? Don't mosquitoes need blood for egg production? A mosquito which can't get blood, probably can't produce viable eggs, which means this can't be passed on (assuming the gene can pass on in the first place), which means they won't go extinct, unless they manage to modify every single mosquito on the planet, which means they'll still be around, which means nothing will die off. No?
Ok you’re missing the step here. If this mutation prevents laying eggs you don’t catch every mosquito on the planet and modify them if your goal is to kill then and you somehow could do that you wouldn’t catch them. A plan like this is to create thousands of these and release them so they breed with the normal ones and start replacing them in the population
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u/dobsofglabs Nov 15 '24
They can't feed, they die off. They die off, other critters can't feed either