Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by digital_ins 3774 days ago
We definitely should. I'm sure there are factors in the ecosystem that rely (but maybe not depend) on mosquito presence.

That's why I love the idea of being able to genetically modify them to produce only male offspring. It provides a nice, asymptotic curve way of culling the population without dramatically changing their ecosystem overnight
1 comments
taneq 3774 days ago
Yeah, even if there are no obligate mosquivores, we're perturbing a chaotic system, which is defined by sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Any action we take (including none at all) is going to have some arbitrarily large (or small) effect on the future state of the system.

If it works exactly as described, the 'only male offspring' modification should be nice and side-effect-free. But then, evolution is a big-numbers statistical game. Who knows what interesting variations we'll see..

link
digital_ins 3774 days ago
it's quite possible that mosquitoes that don't require a male to procreate will take dominance. I think there are wasps like that...
link
taneq 3774 days ago
True, species with heterogametic females (such as some reptiles) will revert to parthogenesis if no male is available. If mosquitoes are like that (are they?) then that could lead to all sorts of interesting consequences after a dedicated push to release infertile males.
link