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Google requests permission to release 32m mosquitoes in California and Florida
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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Yes, I hate mosquitoes, but they’re a pretty significant part of the ecosystem. But Google is well known for their measured and thoughtful approach, and especially long-term planning, so I’m sure it’s going to be just fine.
Only a couple of species of mosquitoes actually bite human beings. At least one of those species is not native to the United States. We can safely kill those species and it should not impact the diet of birds and other things, sincere will still be plenty of other mosquitoes to go around.
https://askabiologist.asu.edu/mosquito-species
They are targeting the major disease carrying species, so it's not like we will be getting rid of all the pests - and their benefits - the way aerial poision spraying does.
Testing in Singapore reduced disease burden by 70-80% after the release, that's significant improvement in quality of life - I know people who contracted West Nile, it's not fun.
california doesnt seem to have an endemic mosquito borne disease problem, florida does though.
I'd amend that to say: the whole state of California isn't a mosquito infested swamp like Florida is, but there are still plenty of mosquitoes in certain parts of California.
I'm not American so excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that Florida was full of swamps and low lying (fresh-ish) water whereas California was significantly drier, with most water in rivers.
The former is an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos (still or stagnant fresh or brackish water), whereas running water and oceans are extremely poor for mosquito breeding.
Seems pretty clear why Florida (and Mississipi etc) have a bigger mosquito problem to me - what am I missing ?
You are quite correct in your current impression of the state differences. My backyard in my previous Florida home bordered on a protected watershed area. I referred to it as Dagobah, and you essentially couldn't go in the backyard for a good part of the year without getting swarmed.
california gets teh occasional mosquito "infestation" wierdly just before winter and right after summer, and nots even every year. since most winters, years have been colder than normal i have seen less mosquitoes than before the pandemic, thats a big stretch. since its quite dry up in norcal. we know historically the south gets mosquitoes due it being swampy and its a breeding ground for mosquitoes, especially invasive ones.
We have west nile and many others. Its very bad. Theres a metric ton of them bugs here.
Source: i live here.
50/50 this has been in the works for a long time by many trust worthy people and companies well before Google. How Google got their dick in this? Who the hell knows. They also wanted to do the same in New Zealand for rats. They are invasive and have decimated the local bird population by eating eggs. It almost went ahead until some dumbfuck indigenous big chief was all like "nature finds a way" well now, birds are dead and rats are everywhere. Guess nature got fucking lost.
Yeah, nature's way is: the rats win. That's how we're here and the Neanderthals aren't.
What? The rats fucked the birds until the species merged?
'Cause that's what happened between us and the Neanderthals.
That's not the only factor in the die-out of the Neanderthals. Another is thought to be a massive reduction of the population and geographical constriction during the ice age, isolated communities afterwards resulting in little genetic variation, and thereby high susceptibility to disease.
I think it was a bunch of treacherous weasly h. sapiens too...
Was this around the Waikaremoana area, by any chance?
No clue sorry. I haven't looked into it in some time.
I'll look forward to hearing that the program has been cancelled for no apparent reason in a couple of years after successfully delivering all of its objectives
I'm honestly ok with the ecosystem risk to eliminate the specific species that bite humans. Other species will likely fill the niche they have as food, etc. Mosquitoes are literally the deadliest animals, killing way more people than even other people.
What exactly is the risk to the ecosystem? Since you're okay with it, you should know what it is, right?
The ecosystem is pretty important for things like us having food.
The ecosystem risk is that a reduction in A. Aegpyti population causes a collapse of the insectivores that depend on consuming it and thus starve, with a knock on effect up the food chain.
While this may happen, a) predation is not currently any real constraint on the population, and b) other insects have been shown to be able to take up part of the niche and c) this already an ecosystem which been rebalanced - they are not naturally occurring in the US they have travelled over with humans
Google is thoroughly evil, and I upvoted the cynical parent comment, but on this one subject they are on the right side of the ledger.
Other non disease carrying mosquitos can take over the ecological niche for a net benefit to humanity.
Thank you for the info! I'm still hesitant about unknown consequences, but I'm far from an expert in that area.
There is literally no option to endanger mosquito species which act as vectors for human disease while people, agriculture, and wild mammal populations exist. This is local suppression in municipal areas.
32 million would be like fighting a wildfire with a spraybottle if your goal was eradication.
Eradicating disease is an option though as we CAN control transmission.