We did consult him for help with moth IDs here on Twitter, and although there's no way we could have known he was doing this, we still feel the need to apologize for exposing our readers to-and let's just put it as bluntly as possible-an alleged child predator.
We try to be careful about who we consult, and let into our conversations.
Unfortunately, it's not always possible to know what's going on behind the scenes.
Needless to say, we will not be requesting any more assistance from this person.
Also, if anyone has had any noteworthy interactions with this person, please don't hesitate to contact @OttawaPolice to assist with their investigation.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
So, I've been thinking about how to properly respond to this...and there's really no way to do that because we will never be able to take our ecosystems from Earth to other planets.
What Musk proposes here is (as @Myrmecos pointed out) simply impossible.
The most important is a reference strain. Lots of mosquitoes were being bred in labs before pesticides were introduced, so we *know* they're not resistant to them.
If we're curious about a modern population, we can compare and use them as a standard.
Besides reference strains for pesticides, we know that the lab reference strains can transmit most of the 'normal' diseases that Ae. aegypti spread.
However, not all populations of Ae. aegypti spread every disease.