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ChristianKl comments on How to win the World Food Prize - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Clarity 31 July 2015 11:12AM

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Comment author: AndreInfante 31 July 2015 10:07:44PM *  0 points [-]

The issue is that crashing the mosquito population doesn't work if even a few of them survive to repopulate - the plan needs indefinite maintenance, and the mosquitoes will eventually evolve to avoid our lab-bred dud males.

I wonder if you could breed a version of the mosquito that's healthy but has an aversion to humans, make your genetic change dominant, and then release a bunch of THOSE mosquitoes. There'd be less of a fitness gap between the modified mosquitoes and the original species, so if we just kept dumping modified males every year for a decade or two, we might be able to completely drive the original human-seeking genes out of the ecosystem.

Comment author: ChristianKl 03 August 2015 08:17:09AM 0 points [-]

The issue is that crashing the mosquito population doesn't work if even a few of them survive to repopulate - the plan needs indefinite maintenance, and the mosquitoes will eventually evolve to avoid our lab-bred dud males.

Why do you think mosquitos that carry malaria didn't repopulate the US and Europe after they were first driven out?

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 03 August 2015 06:49:40PM *  0 points [-]