Google has applied to the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to deploy 64 million non-biting southern house mosquitoes that it has infected with bacterium Wolbachia pipientis across California and Florida in a bid to reduce mosquito-borne diseases. According to Google, the initiative is to slash the population of mosquitoes.
The bacterium doesn’t harm infected males, but it does prevent any uninfected females they mate with from having offspring, thereby slashing mosquito populations over time.In this case, the big tech company is aiming at southern house mosquitoes (Culex quinquefasciatus), an invasive species native to tropical and subtropical regions that can spread diseases like West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis in humans.
Live Science recorded that the initiative generated enthusiasm among scientists. Interviewing Karthikeyan Chandrasegaran, an assistant professor at the University of California, she agrees that using Wolbachia is a “reasonable” mosquito control approach, particularly when compared to the use of broad insecticides.”Wolbachia-based strategies are generally species-specific and do not introduce novel toxins into the environment,” Chandrasegaran said. “Importantly, Wolbachia is already widespread in many insect species and is a naturally occurring bacterial symbiont rather than a genetically engineered organism. From that perspective, they are among the more environmentally conservative mosquito control tools currently available.”
In response, the EPA has deemed Google’s request to be necessary in curtailing the spread of diseases caused by mosquitoes while preserving them going extinct. The Agency is looking forward to making a public announcement on June 5, where it will mandate Google to release up to 32 million mosquitoes in California and another 32 million in Florida over two years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet, killing between 500,000 to more than a million people a year by spreading harmful diseases. Given the blood-suckers are so small, widespread and numerous, reducing them at scale is tricky. Using insecticides can harm the environment and kill other pollinators, and increasingly, mosquitoes are building up a resistance to them.
