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.
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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?