Florida plans to solve mosquito problem with 750 million mosquitoes

Hundreds of millions of mosquitoes will soon be released in Florida. On purpose. Mosquitoes are released as a form of pest control, but they could wreak havoc on local ecosystems. And honestly, just thinking about it makes my ankles itch.

This week, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District approved a plan to release 750 million of these motherfuckers throughout 2021 and 2022. But these are no ordinary mosquitoes; they have been genetically modified to reduce the number of another type of mosquito.

You see the area has a big problem with Aedes aegypti, a type of mosquito species that carries yellow fever, Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and other deadly diseases. They are the reason for the current dengue epidemic in the Upper Keys, which infected nearly 50 people.

These asshole mosquitoes only make up about 1% of the Florida Keys mosquito population, but they are such a problem that Florida Keys Mosquito Control typically allocates over a million dollars a year to keep them under control. Most of the money is spent on expensive aerial sprays to eradicate the insects.

Scientists say the new experiment could be a cheaper alternative. Scientists have modified these upcoming lab mosquitoes, which they call the species OX5034, to produce female offspring that die as larvae. You see, only female mosquitoes bite people to get blood because they need it to ripen their eggs. Males simply drink nectar so as not to transmit disease to humans. The female offspring of these new mosquitoes will die before they hatch and grow large enough to bite people.

Some researchers are pretty convinced that this creepy new program will work – so much so that there is another plan to release these genetically modified types in a county in Texas next year as well, according to Oxitec, the company behind these plans. Oxitec boasts of its success, claiming that the approach has been proven job in field trials in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Malaysia and Brazil in the last three years. But environmentalists are raising significant concerns about the plans.

No one is down with mosquitoes and no one is down with dengue. But some scientists warn that this experiment could backfire. In one study published in Nature Last year, a group of researchers warned that this project could create wild hybrid mosquitoes by mating that may in fact be more resistant to insecticides than wild mosquitoes and thus worsen the spread of the disease. Indeed, while most female descendants of genetically modified insects die, between 3% and 4% of them usually survive to adulthood, and that is not clear if they are sterile.

Then there is worries on the ecological consequences of the release of laboratory-modified insects. A recent field study on Brazil, for example, showed that genetically modified genes from genetically modified mosquitoes had spread in wild populations of mosquitoes. If this happens in the Florida Keys, it’s unclear what impacts it might have on insect food chains and ecosystem functioning. It’s troubling, especially because the Keys are home to a rich variety of plants, as well as terrestrial and marine wildlife. Sensitive ecosystems are already under threat from threats such as overfishing and development, and throwing another part of the unique region out of control could have unintended consequences. These results are particularly difficult to predict as officials have yet to say exactly where the Franken mosquitoes will be unleashed.

Florida’s insect release plan now has state and Environmental Protection Agency approval, but environmental groups like the Center for Food Security and Florida Keys Environmental Coalition are pushing for this approval to be withdrawn. It has happened before: a previously planned version in the Florida Keys of a prototype version of Oxitec’s mosquito was shot in 2018 because a referendum showed that local residents were against the plan.

“The Mosquito Control Board has an obligation to our community,” Barry Wray, executive director of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition, said in a statement. “He is not a supplier whose products are risky and unreliable.”