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Comment by nickgrosvenor | Hacker News Reader

More politicians should campaign on eradicating mosquitoes in their local communities using gene editing. In the last decade Los Angeles has been infested with Aedes mosquitoes. A much more dangerous type than the culex we’re used to.

They need much less water to grow eggs, Attack the lower body of humans quickly in short bursts so they’re harder to swat, and can transfer all the dangerous diseases mosquitoes are known for.

Very scary and very solvable before it gets out of hand.

https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-m...

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Not only scary & solvable, but eradicating invasive species is also generally considered a safe & ecologically desirable thing.

Most of them would opt for the simpler solution of spraying more chemicals everywhere as if they only affect mosquitos

We have the same little bastards in NYC. My yard is quite lush and shady so I believe it gives them shade and cover to breed. I can't enjoy my yard because of them. I thought the natural shade and privacy would be nice but it's not worth it if you get eaten alive. Today I had enough and chopped down some smaller trees that were shading along with pruning back another shade tree. I also removed a large bed of a crawling plant that looked nice in place of grass but was more cover.

Do you have standing water, or are they coming in from the neighbors? It doesn’t take much water to get mosquitos. Tires, plastic containers, drip trays for planters, mis-hung gutters...

After a day cleaning I'm now sure it's the derelict house behind mine. The elderly owner passed and their kids are fighting over ownership. It also doesn't help that the pig of a neighbor who shares the driveway uses the yard and space between the garage as a landfill. Time to call 311. Perhaps trimming the trees won't help but I have to try something.

I have had luck with the kind of mosquito trap that burns propane to make warm moist co2 and then sucks then mosquitos in with a fan. I have found the light traps to be pretty much useless.

Is it indeed possible to eradicate mosquitoes? Outside my house at certain parts of the day, there's tons and it only takes a few seconds to get swarmed. :(

What is the latest-and-greatest mosquito extermination tech?

We bought some GAT traps to thin the swarms of tiger mosquitos we have in DC and it seems to be working:

https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/

What I really want to mature is the photonic fence but that’s been slow going: https://photonicsentry.com/

The sterile-male technique is IMO the latest & greatest. You breed vast quantities of sterile males (which do not bite, only females bite) and release them in an area. They compete with viable males for mates, and the net effect is suppressing the reproduction of the population.

It exhibits some very desirable attributes. It's incredibly selective, targeting only one species. It is also self-limiting, there is no feedback loop that could run out of control and there are no chemicals that could accumulate in the environment.

For a while the cost of breeding the males was prohibitive but some recent innovation has dropped the cost tremendously.

Mosquitoes are valuable pollinators, and the majority do not carry diseases. If you have a simple solution to a big problem, then most likely, you're going to have more problems.

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