I am not a Geneticist or Biologist

[Firoth]

We need to make predatory bushes that have Venus Flytraps instead of leaves and that give off the scent that mosquitoes use to track humans.

Now, I know mosquitoes use more than scent to find their meals, but with as many as would be on a bush, I imagine enough would end up in the traps. Obviously, there would be some collateral; the plants would only attract mosquitoes, but they wouldn't be able to distinguish between other bugs.

I guess you would start with turning the flytraps into bushes, then make them emit a smell that mosquitoes track by. Clearly, this would take time.

Do you think it would work? Do you think it would do more harm than good? How much would you donate to a kickstarter(or whatever) for this?

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Because introducing new species for any type of gain always have been good idea, like a bullfrog or something.

No, it is seriously terrible idea since we don't know:
1. How large impact can be, areawise and in terms of damage.
2. Generally irreversible once it is done.

Biological introduction of new species must be considered with caution that rivals tactical nuclear strike.

 

[Recusant]

Why, exactly, do we need to do this? Well, mosquitoes kill people. About three quarters of a billion of them each year. That's why so many lists put them as the top killer of humans, above even other humans.

Here's the catch: it's not true. Mosquitoes kill very few people; it's the diseases they carry that kill so many. And if you count mosquitoes simply because they're a transmission vector, you need to count humans for establishing lousy healthcare, setting up easily disruptable supply chains to allow for widespread malnutrition, which makes everything that's potentially dangerous more likely to kill you, as well as disrupting those supply chains. Getting malaria in rural Africa may be a death sentence; getting it in rural Massachusetts is much less of a problem (though the panic it'll likely inspire may be pretty dangerous in its own right). A first-world nuisance is a third-world crisis.

Let's be blunt, here: most of the areas where mosquitoes cause massive deaths are impoverished, technologically backward countries. They are not, as so many like to call them, "developing" countries; what they are is "economic shitholes", which are, by and large, staying that way, if not getting worse. Even assuming nothing goes wrong with your proposed mosquito-munchers, these are not places economically (or, more subtly but even more likely, socially) prepared to death with a sudden massive population increase. I realize that it sounds terribly cold to think of human lives in such terms, but you don't maintain equilibrium by removing a big chunk of selective pressure and doing nothing else. The famines and wars that might follow would be horrendous. The ideo-cultural backlash that might follow if the rest of the world comes in with food relief and plans for restructuring the local economy (and by extension, society) would be even worse. It's no fun to watch people starve and die of diseases that could easily be prevented. It's even less fun to watch people hack each other to pieces with machetes, or strap on suicide bomber vests to make their ancestors proud.

And remember, that's assuming everything works right- don't forget about all the creatures out there that eat mosquitoes!

 

[FalloutJack]

When we cross the territories of the plant and the human (plant giving off a human scent from some kind of specialized glands), we ask for a kind of manipulation of traits that could produce negative results AND is not even necessary. Honestly, if we're talking about attracting mosquitoes to a human-smelling trap, make scented flypaper! It requires no greater scientific knowledge than the isolated smell in human sweat that brings in the bugs, plus a hangable sticky-tape.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

We need to make predatory bushes that have Venus Flytraps instead of leaves and that give off the scent that mosquitoes use to track humans.

Now, I know mosquitoes use more than scent to find their meals, but with as many as would be on a bush, I imagine enough would end up in the traps. Obviously, there would be some collateral; the plants would only attract mosquitoes, but they wouldn't be able to distinguish between other bugs.

I guess you would start with turning the flytraps into bushes, then make them emit a smell that mosquitoes track by. Clearly, this would take time.

Do you think it would work? Do you think it would do more harm than good? How much would you donate to a kickstarter(or whatever) for this?

This sounds like terrible idea. Not only I doubt if you could replace all leaves in bush with venus flytraps, besides being horrendously expensive and time consuming, I'm pretty sure this kind of plant would destroy quite a bit of ecosystems or at least change them in a rather unpleaseant way. So no, I don't it would work.

 

[Avnger]

When we cross the territories of the plant and the human (plant giving off a human scent from some kind of specialized glands), we ask for a kind of manipulation of traits that could produce negative results AND is not even necessary. Honestly, if we're talking about attracting mosquitoes to a human-smelling trap, make scented flypaper! It requires no greater scientific knowledge than the isolated smell in human sweat that brings in the bugs, plus a hangable sticky-tape.

Pretty much this. It's much easier to produce a synthetic equivalent instead of some frankenstein monster that would eventually do who-knows-what to the ecosystem. I think we've fucked up enough times as a species trying to alter an ecosystem with an exotic animal/plant/whatever to know how bad of an idea it is.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Why, exactly, do we need to do this? Well, mosquitoes kill people. About three quarters of a billion of them each year. That's why so many lists put them as the top killer of humans, above even other humans.

Here's the catch: it's not true. Mosquitoes kill very few people; it's the diseases they carry that kill so many. And if you count mosquitoes simply because they're a transmission vector, you need to count humans for establishing lousy healthcare, setting up easily disruptable supply chains to allow for widespread malnutrition, which makes everything that's potentially dangerous more likely to kill you, as well as disrupting those supply chains.

While this is true, people keep complaining when I try to make plants that eat humans.

Getting malaria in rural Africa may be a death sentence; getting it in rural Massachusetts is much less of a problem (though the panic it'll likely inspire may be pretty dangerous in its own right). A first-world nuisance is a third-world crisis.

Very true, however it could be argued that a first world nation is only first world at the moment, this could change and eradicating disease vectors would be a useful precaution. A generation or two in the US there were big pushes to remove mosquito breeding grounds, a few economic crashes (or carnivorous plant outbreaks, I guess) and things could slide back there again.

Let's be blunt, here: most of the areas where mosquitoes cause massive deaths are impoverished, technologically backward countries. They are not, as so many like to call them, "developing" countries; what they are is "economic shitholes", which are, by and large, staying that way, if not getting worse. Even assuming nothing goes wrong with your proposed mosquito-munchers, these are not places economically (or, more subtly but even more likely, socially) prepared to death with a sudden massive population increase. I realize that it sounds terribly cold to think of human lives in such terms, but you don't maintain equilibrium by removing a big chunk of selective pressure and doing nothing else. The famines and wars that might follow would be horrendous. The ideo-cultural backlash that might follow if the rest of the world comes in with food relief and plans for restructuring the local economy (and by extension, society) would be even worse. It's no fun to watch people starve and die of diseases that could easily be prevented. It's even less fun to watch people hack each other to pieces with machetes, or strap on suicide bomber vests to make their ancestors proud.

While, yes, there's plenty of problems around, not seeing why potential wars are worse than definite plagues.

 

[Recusant]

Let's be blunt, here: most of the areas where mosquitoes cause massive deaths are impoverished, technologically backward countries. They are not, as so many like to call them, "developing" countries; what they are is "economic shitholes", which are, by and large, staying that way, if not getting worse. Even assuming nothing goes wrong with your proposed mosquito-munchers, these are not places economically (or, more subtly but even more likely, socially) prepared to death with a sudden massive population increase. I realize that it sounds terribly cold to think of human lives in such terms, but you don't maintain equilibrium by removing a big chunk of selective pressure and doing nothing else. The famines and wars that might follow would be horrendous. The ideo-cultural backlash that might follow if the rest of the world comes in with food relief and plans for restructuring the local economy (and by extension, society) would be even worse. It's no fun to watch people starve and die of diseases that could easily be prevented. It's even less fun to watch people hack each other to pieces with machetes, or strap on suicide bomber vests to make their ancestors proud.

While, yes, there's plenty of problems around, not seeing why potential wars are worse than definite plagues.

Because everyone wants plagues to stop. Because containing an infection is a definite task, whereas containing the evils of the human soul is not. Plague is bad. War is worse.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

See, what if the same attraction mechanism also attracts other vital insects to said traps and decimates said populations? Consequences of introducing an altered species of anything is almost always devastating in some way.
And, while it sucks that disease is spread through mosquitoes, recall that disease is a part of nature and eliminating them or their delivery mechanisms can also have catastrophic results. Viruses and the like, for all horrible plagues can be, are a natural way of population growth deterrence and homeostatic safeguards for balance purposes. Mucking about too much in that will lead to something terrible.
The whole proving we can while never asking if we should principle applies here. We shouldn't. There's an evolutionary reason for mosquitoes, as much as it sucks, they've a purpose else they'd have gone buhbye.

 

[Megalodon]

The whole proving we can while never asking if we should principle applies here. We shouldn't. There's an evolutionary reason for mosquitoes, as much as it sucks, they've a purpose else they'd have gone buhbye.

Sorry, but that isn't how evolution works. The 'evolutionary reason' for mosquitoes is that they're a successful species capable of surviving and reproducing in their environment. They have no purpose beyond propagating the future generation of the species. That is the only thing the evolutojnary process selects for, no plan, no purpose, no balance, just success in the face of every obstacle life can throw.

And, while it sucks that disease is spread through mosquitoes, recall that disease is a part of nature and eliminating them or their delivery mechanisms can also have catastrophic results. Viruses and the like, for all horrible plagues can be, are a natural way of population growth deterrence and homeostatic safeguards for balance purposes. Mucking about too much in that will lead to something terrible.

While I agree with the sentiment that OP's idea isn't really workable. It's not due to this surreal 'balance of nature' argument. By that logic we shouldn't have eliminated smallpox, vaccinate our children or have a medical system at all.

As for OP's suggestion, a fine mad science idea, but sadly impractical. Aside from unforeseen ecological changes caused by new species introduction, which is a real issue, it's simply impractical. Such a GMO would be incredibly expensive to make, cause all kinds of 'Frankenstein' bad PR, plus may not even work that well anyway. After all there are a lot of mosquitoes, how many bushes would you need to significantly drop their population? That money would be better spent on sterility schemes, insecticides and mosquito nets.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I don't know ... regularly paying for insecticide deployment seems like a better way to reduce cases of malaria than introducing entirely new species into multiple ecological habitats.

That being said, I'm a firm believer in biological pest control systems. Australia genetically engineered a few diseases to make them extremely virulent, and targeted solely, against rabbit numbers and it did the trick. Wild rabbit numbers plummeted. Now if we could do the same to cats...

Though I don't see why we need to invent the wheel on this ... how about genetically engineering a mosquito so that each generation it produces far, far, far more males than females ... reducing total numbers and reducing the number of mosquitoes actually biting people? Surely that seems like a more doable objective... Assuming these new mosquitoes have survival rates equally as high as unengineered varieties, we should start seeing a turn around over only a few decades depending on a large enough, and spread out enough, introduction.

Yes, I am advocating we basically destroy mosquitoes or make it next to impossible for them to build up to current numbers ... but nobody complains when we did it against, say, Guinea worm.

 

[Megalodon]

Though I don't see why we need to invent the wheel on this ... how about genetically engineering a mosquito so that each generation it produces far, far, far more males than females ... reducing total numbers and reducing the number of mosquitoes actually biting people? Surely that seems like a more doable objective.

They have actually done something similar. They release large volumes of sterilised insects into the wild, which then compete with the wild population for mates, reducing overall reproductive success. Although they don't seem to have successfully targeted mosquitoes with it yet, work is being done on that front.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique

 

[Kolby Jack]

I prefer machines that kill mosquitoes with lasers. Much less likely to go horribly wrong, technological progress will eventually make them cheap to produce, and LASERS. Straight up light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, ************! Fuck plants! Unless the plant shoots lasers, WHO CARES?!

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

They have actually done something similar. They release large volumes of sterilised insects into the wild, which then compete with the wild population for mates, reducing overall reproductive success. Although they don't seem to have successfully targeted mosquitoes with it yet, work is being done on that front.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique

Yeah, I had heard about this stuff before. But this seems like a single generation type of thing. If we could do it with females on the other hand, and somehow have it as a genetically inherited trait ... then you'd only need to do it once and then just wait. I suppose there is the danger of the 'unknown quantity' .... but it's not as though we should bother trying. Mosquito numbers won't naturally reduce for as long as we have modern agriculture.

Is it possible, instead of sterilisation what about favourable genetic conditions to produce overwhelmingly a single sex production significantly outside the norm for a species?

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I prefer machines that kill mosquitoes with lasers. Much less likely to go horribly wrong, technological progress will eventually make them cheap to produce, and LASERS. Straight up light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, ************! Fuck plants! Unless the plant shoots lasers, WHO CARES?!

I could see a problem with this plan given that the problem with mosquitos is they naturally congregate and breed up near agricultural zones, or in places which regularly maintain pools of water like cities (tires, drains, storm water systems, etc) ... so basically lasers enough to burn mosquitos, deployed near population centers and cattle stations ... constantly going off, terrifying livestock, and blinding people.

I personally can see this plan going horribly, entertainingly wrong.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I prefer machines that kill mosquitoes with lasers. Much less likely to go horribly wrong, technological progress will eventually make them cheap to produce, and LASERS. Straight up light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, ************! Fuck plants! Unless the plant shoots lasers, WHO CARES?!

I could see a problem with this plan given that the problem with mosquitos is they naturally form over places near agricultural, or in places which regularly maintain pools of water like cities (tires, drains, storm water systems, etc) ... so basically lasers enough to burn mosquitos, deployed near population centers and cattle stations ... constantly going off, terrifying livestock, and blinding people.

I personally can see this plan going horribly, entertainingly wrong.

How big do you think a laser has to be to kill a mosquito? It most likely wouldn't even hurt a person. Also, it's not like it fires at anything and everything in range. It uses algorithms and shit to target mosquitoes, which are tiny even by insect standards. Do you not know that computers can do that sort of thing? I mean, they've come a long way.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

How big do you think a laser has to be to kill a mosquito? It most likely wouldn't even hurt a person. Also, it's not like it fires at anything and everything in range. It uses algorithms and shit to target mosquitoes, which are tiny even by insect standards. Do you not know that computers can do that sort of thing? I mean, they've come a long way.

Well, I'm guessing that the laser has to be powerful enough to burn a mosquito, right? So I can only imagine that it would be enough to blind a person. And given that mosquitos are attracted to people (and to the vapour and carbon dioxide a person exhales) I might make the argument that it's only a matter of time before a laser shoots into/across your face ...?

 

[Megalodon]

Yeah, I had heard about this stuff before. But this seems like a single generation type of thing. If we could do it with females on the other hand, and somehow have it as a genetically inherited trait ... then you'd only need to do it once and then just wait. I suppose there is the danger of the 'unknown quantity' .... but it's not as though we should bother trying. Mosquito numbers won't naturally reduce for as long as we have modern agriculture.

Is it possible, instead of sterilisation what about favourable genetic conditions to produce overwhelmingly a single sex production significantly outside the norm for a species?

Unlikely, sex differentiation is a reasonably robust process in most species, as far as I'm aware. To screw with that in any meaningful way would either just completely screw up the organism, or be far more intricate, difficult and complicated than just sterilising them with a bit of radiation.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Unlikely, sex differentiation is a reasonably robust process in most species, as far as I'm aware. To screw with that in any meaningful way would either just completely screw up the organism, or be far more intricate, difficult and complicated than just sterilising them with a bit of radiation.

Well ... when we say 'meaningfully' ... even only a 5 points out of a hundred shift one way or another would still mean a lot of mosquitos that simply wouldn't be born. Maybe .... I don't know, how about instead of sex differentiation what about changes to the allosomes that differentiate hormones? Like in humans, the more children you have the more likely that last male child is to be homosexual. Regardless of the genetic information, all about the womb condition ... I know that's not exactly pertinent to egg laying fauna ... but what about pre-egglaying/egg development gravid stage?

So maybe not so much favouring sex one way or another, but changing the nature of mating habits of future generations through hormones expressed on developing eggs?

Or better yet, howabout releasing genetically engineered females at the exact right time that carry a systematically smaller fertile and maturation period through accelerated or decelerated homone expression? See, maybe shorten that window for breeding. If you could do that even for a week for all future generations...

(Edit) Ooh ... actually, how about this idea ... how about systemic genetic flaws ... by releasing genetically engineered femaleswith genetic flaws year, after year, after year ... and inculcaing in mosquitoes a growing pool of systemic weaknesses, flaws and particular susceptibility to disease? You know, conditions that might not have been killers by their own right ... allowing a population to take on that flaw without suffering ... but as new ones get generationally introduced ... every few months.

Instead of engineering a disease, why not 'de-engineer' mosquitoes so that they become susceptible to existing biological agents or environmental conditions?

Think that might work? Thinjk of it like guided evolution. Slowly but surely increasing the specific needs a 'colony' of mosquitoes has ... thus slowly breeding itself, with our help, out of its ecological niches?

 

[Megalodon]

Well ... when we say 'meaningfully' ... even only a 5 points out of a hundred shift one way or another would still mean a lot of mosquitos that simply wouldn't be born. Maybe .... I don't know, how about instead of sex differentiation what about changes to the allosomes that differentiate hormones? Like in humans, the more children you have the more likely that last male child is to be homosexual. Regardless of the genetic information, all about the womb condition ... I know that's not exactly pertinent to egg laying fauna ... but what about pre-egglaying/egg development gravid stage?

Afraid I'm not enough of an entomologist to answer this. All I can say is that, once again, it's probably simpler and cheaper to stick with established methods.

So maybe not so much favouring sex one way or another, but changing the nature of mating habits of future generations through hormones expressed on developing eggs?

Or better yet, howabout releasing genetically engineered females at the exact right time that carry a systematically smaller fertile and maturation period through accelerated or decelerated homone expression? See, maybe shorten that window for breeding. If you could do that even for a week for all future generations...

(Edit) Ooh ... actually, how about this idea ... how about systemic genetic flaws ... by releasing genetically engineered femaleswith genetic flaws year, after year, after year ... and inculcaing in mosquitoes a growing pool of systemic weaknesses, flaws and particular susceptibility to disease? You know, conditions that might not have been killers by their own right ... allowing a population to take on that flaw without suffering ... but as new ones get generationally introduced ... every few months.

Think that might work?

Again, the issue here is adding ultimately unnecessary complexity. If you're releasing wave after wave of bugs across many generations anyway, why not just stick with the simpler sterility therapy? Or spray insecticides?