The article, New Way to Control Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes: Make Them Hold Their Urine, from the online magazine, Science Daily, is interesting because it discusses a possible solution to a problem that we have today: mosquitoes spread diseases when they invade our bodies and steal our blood! According to the article, mosquitoes pick up diseases when they feed off of infected hosts, then travel to new hosts and infect them. A particular type of mosquito, the Aedes aegypti, is responsible for putting 40% of the world’s population at risk of catching dengue fever, a disease that leads to 50-100 million infections and 22,000 deaths annually. There are no vaccines for this fever, so controlling mosquitoes is necessary for the spread of this disease to stop.
Cornell researchers found that as mosquitoes feed off of blood, they need to urinate at the same time to prevent fluid and salt from overloading in their bodies which could kill them. Also, they need to get rid of excess weight in order to be able to fly away. The renal tubes of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are the parts of the body that lead to the promotion of urination as they feed on blood and if there are insecticides that can disrupt the renal system then mosquitoes may not be able to pee. They’ll feed and end up killing themselves because of the salt and liquids that are not being relieved from their systems.
This process would limit the spread of diseases by restricting the mosquitoes’ ability to feed on more than one host, which will potentially save millions of lives. But what effect will this have on nature? Mosquitoes will never know that they are going to die if they drink blood so they will certainly continue to do it, which has the potential to wipe out their entire species depending on how widespread the usage of the new insecticides are. Dragonflies and fish, as well as many other predators, feed on mosquitoes and their larvae, so how well will they be able to adapt to this sudden lack of available food. This could start a huge ripple effect in the natural environment if we act without knowing the potential risks.
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I like how you talk about both aspects of the situation, the good and the bad that could come with discovery. When I was reading your blog, at first I was all the for new insecticides, but after reading that last passage, I began to rethink the situation. I wish there were a way that we could give specific mosquitos that carry diseases the insecticide and leave the other healthy mosquitos alone. This way they could continue in their natural environment.
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