Remember that Zika is carried only by one type of mosquito - Aedes Aegypti (sp?). There would be other mosquitos and insects for birds to eat and to occupy that place in the ecosystem.
Yes, if there is a substitute species in the food chain, it can be done. I will let zoologists who study ecosystems decide how that should be handled.
Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
Radiation-sterilized males used locally successfully on the Mediteranean fruit fly in California.
Lots of points, including an interesting one: mosquitoes prevent humans from spreading further into the jungle.
Very sad. While I think it’s pathetic that congress didn’t move to adequately fund Zika research and prevention, I’m not entirely sure that it would’ve done anything. Like (I think) I said several pages back, we’ve been trying to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito for a long time.
The scariest thing about Zika for pregnant women is that only 1 in 5 people infected with Zika actually show symptoms.
The new National Geographic has an article on this very topic. The modification being looked at is just the one species. If we could knock it out, I suspect other mosquito species would fill in the gap. It is not native to the Western Hemisphere.
I’m interested in why the jump in affected babies. Did the virus mutate sometime recently in a very fundamental way?
The microcephaly and GBS (which, as far as I know, hasn’t been proven to be more common with Zika than other viruses- but I haven’t been keeping up on it recently so please correct me if I’m wrong!) have been around since Zika first appeared.
We do know that the virus is mutating very quickly. I almost wonder if it has always affected babies but it was causing more miscarriages rather than letting the fetus making it to full term (and has now mutated causing less miscarriages and more full term births of fetuses with microcephaly).
The problem with tracing Zika since it first appeared in the middle of the 20th century is that no one tested for it. It was known to exist but it paled in severity to other conditions like Dengue. This likely resulted in a very significant under-count of both the prevalence and incidence of Zika before the recent increase in fetal abnormalities.
Here’s a WHO report from earlier this year that I found interesting: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/204961/1/zikasitrep_7Apr2016_eng.pdf?ua=1
First Zika-related baby death in US: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/08/09/baby-zika-linked-birth-defect-dies-texas/88446620/