A Terrifying Robot Can Thwart Invasive Mosquito Fish

 

Isadora Schmidt

Current Event 10

Citations:

Lambert, Jonathan. “A Terrifying Robot Can Thwart Invasive Mosquito Fish.” Science News, December 16, 2021.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/robot-invasive-mosquito-fish

          For this Current Events Review I decided to read an article called “A Terrifying Robot Can Thwart Invasive Mosquito Fish.” by Jonathan Lambert. The main idea of this article was to show how advancements in our technology today can help many different animals in the world who are suffering from other predators that are giving them many problems. This article starts by talking about the invasive mosquito fish species and how they tend to live out in the wild, the article tells us how mosquito fish are able to escape the predators of their native land and flee to other parts of the world where they can do whatever they want. But scientists have figured out how to make a robotic copy of one of the mosquito fish’s natural predators which can be used to provoke fear into the fish who seem to always be carefree. The article then goes into real depth about how these mosquito fish were spread to other parts of the world and says “Native to parts of the western and southeastern United States, mosquito fish were let loose in freshwater ecosystems around the globe last century in a foolhardy effort to control malaria. But instead of eating malaria-transmitting mosquito larvae, the mosquito fish mostly gobble up the eggs and gnaw at the tails of native fish and amphibians” (Lambert). The author tells us that these fish wee supposed to be helpful to underwater ecosystems which is why the government decided to let them free into the areas where malaria was spreading btu instead of being helpful, the fish actually ate other kinds of fish in these areas and their eggs which made them one of the most dangerous invasive species. The article then talks about how the government tried to get rid of the mosquito fish, they tried using traps, poison in the water and even mass killing which ended up doing nothing to the invasive species. Giovanni Polverino from the University of Western Australia even stated “The problem isn’t necessarily the presence of mosquito fish in these ecosystems, Polverino says, but their wanton behavior enabled by a lack of predators.” (Lambert). So scientists knew they needed to do something to stop these mosquito fish from acting like they own the waters and everything is small prey to them. Polverino and his colleagues decided they wanted to see if a robotic fish of a mosquito fish’s predators would do anything to scare the invasive fish. The article then goes into detail about the experiment conducted where the lab had ten tanks that housed 6 mosquito fish with a few australian tadpoles that were harassed by the mosquito fish but half of the tanks also had a robotic fish that was designed to attack if the mosquito fish got close to the tadpoles. The results of this experiment was quite interesting, the author included how the robotic predator influenced the mosquito fish’s behavior on themselves and towards the small tadpoles. The article says “Fear of the robot altered the behavior, shape and fertility of the mosquito fish, both during exposure and weeks later. Mosquito fish facing the robot tended to cluster together and not explore the tank, while the tadpoles, free of harassment, ventured farther out.” (Lambert). Just the single fear that this robot had the ability to attack the mosquito fish had them all freaked out, not only did the fear alter their behaviors to the tadpoles but also on their bodies, most of the fish used so much energy that they were getting smaller. The article ends by saying that these scientists won’ release the robot fish into the wild but they now know there are better ways to control an invasive fish then killing them all.

          If scientists collectively decided to make more of these fish robots and actually release them into the wild it could help society in some parts of the world. As I quoted earlier, the main purpose to release the mosquito fish into freshwater areas was to help control malaria. They thought the fish would help by eating malaria-transmitting mosquito larvae so that once regular mosquitoes came to the larvae to take the malaria virus, there wouldn't be any leading to mosquitoes not being able to carry the virus around and put malaria into a human’s system. But these were thought out over a century ago where we didn’t have as advanced technology as we do today, so sending mosquito fish into the wild was more like an experiment to see what they would do to the freshwater ecosystems and their test didn’t work out in a positive way. Instead of eating malaria-transmitting mosquito larvae, the fish actually ate the eggs of native fish and amphibians and sometimes ate the animals themselves which made them super dangerous because the fish knew that there weren’t any of their predators in these freshwater areas so they did whatever they wanted. But if scientists started making tons of fish robots (which would take a long time) and sending them all out into these waters with mosquito fish, the fish could get really scared of these robots and start actually doing the jobs they were supposed to do. And if they started getting rid of the larvae that hold malaria, the virus won't transmit to mosquitoes meaning humans can’t get the virus from mosquitoes which is great because there are mosquitoes everywhere, especially in these specific areas.

          While this article had many great aspects, there are a couple of things that I would change to make the writing even better. The first thing I would change is the way the author organized the article, at the beginning of the article Lambert put a small paragraph about mosquito fish but then immediately changed directions to talk about an experiment where a lab created robot fish but the reader has little to no information why these scientists needed to create robot fish and why they relate to mosquito fish. But then the article switches back to background information and tells the reader how mosquito fish got released into other parts of the world where they don’t live and why they are so dangerous to other animals and the ecosystems they live in. To improve the writing, I would put the two paragraphs of background information together and afterwards talk about the experiment with robot fish to keep a well organized article. The last thing I would do to improve the writing is I would like to include more sources from other scientists to see how they feel about the robot fish that were constructed and made to scare off mosquito fish. In the article, Lambert only used information from the University of Western Australia which is where the experiment was conducted but I would like to know other opinions from experienced scientists and find out their thoughts about this experiment with robot fish and whether they think these robots can actually help animals, ecosystems or society in any way. But overall this article was very interesting to read and I would definitely recommend checking it out to learn more about the experiment and how they managed to control these fish who used to not have a care in the world.