Who needs mosquitoes?

Back in July Nature ran a news feature on A world without mosquitoes, in which the general desirability and feasibility of mosquito eradication was discussed. Kind of a, ‘what have mosquitoes ever done for us?’ Apart, that is, from acting as a super-efficient vector for a multitude of nasty diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile virus. Now, I agree that we should not a priori rule out any course of action that can reduce the enormous human suffering caused by these diseases, and that no-one regrets the eradication of smallpox, say. But plans to eradicate insects that can be numerically extraordinarily abundant within an ecosystem, in both the aquatic and terrestrial stages of their lifecycles, set ecological alarm bells ringing loud in my head.

It seems I’m not alone, judging by the lively correspondence appearing in print last week, as well as comments on the online version. Stephen M. Smith (Dept. Biology, Waterloo, Ontario) writes of his astonishment at ‘the hubris of the mosquito experts… who believe the ecological consequences of an extinction would be minor, nil, or quickly compensated’, and I tend to agree, based on quotes like this from the original article:

If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over (Entomologist Joe Conlon, American Mosquito Control Association, Jacksonville, Florida; my italics)

If you pop one rivet out of an airplane’s wing, it’s unlikely that the plane will cease to fly (Steven Juliano, Illinois State University, Normal; a monumentally unfortunate choice of words, given the Ehrlichs’ famous rivet popper essay in their book on extinction)

And from the main text:

Most mosquito-eating birds would probably switch to other insects that, post-mosquitoes, might emerge in large numbers to take their place [my italics]

Ultimately, there seem to be few things that mosquitoes do that other organisms can’t do just as well

History is littered with the disastrous consequences of well-meaning ecological meddling (very relevant here is the story of malaria eradication in the US, DDT, and its effects on bird populations, so beautifully described in Silent Spring), and so the fact that ‘there is not enough evidence of ecosystem disruption here to give the eradicators pause for thought’ should certainly worry us (shouldn’t we always, anyway, pause for thought?). But there is another angle to this debate, which raises some intriguing questions.

Conservation organisations are rapidly adopting an ecosystem services approach, whereby we conserve nature because of the bounty with which it provides us (fish to eat, clean water, climate regulation, psychological wellbeing, and so on and on). Mosquito eradication can thus be framed in a more utilitarian way: do they provide us with any benefits? Sure, adult mosquitoes are major pollinators (but not of major crops), but other than that? As medical entomologist Janet McAllister (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Fort Collins Colorado) puts it in the original article, ‘If there was a benefit to having them around, we would have found a way to exploit them’. This point is picked up in the correspondence by Fern Wickson (Genøk Centre for Biosafety, Tromsø, Norway) who asks,

…what else might we reasonably eliminate from the face of the planet – deadly snakes, plague locusts? …ecologists have to ask what minimum level of biodiversity is required for functional provision of ecosystem services to sustain humanity.

It is not clear to me whether Wickson is advocating this kind of audit, or simply raising it as the logical endpoint of the eradication stance, but it is a really important question: how far should we go in deciding which species ‘deserve’ to share the planet with us?

Even within the mosquitoes this is complex. There are, after all, around 3500 species, only a few of which are a health hazard. So should we eradicate the malaria-carrying Anopheles species? What about Aedes aegypti, which carries yellow fever? And if those, why not the bloody midges that can ruin Scottish holidays? Or the wasps which seem to exist only to cause havoc at picnics (although of course they are much more important – see buglife’s new Stop Swatting Wasps campaign).

It’s a question conservation biologists are not very good at addressing, because there is no objective, scientific answer: where do we start managing nature? And where do we stop?

On hard luck and hard work

A couple of recent posts have stimulated discussions into the relative roles of luck and hard work in a successful scientific career, and have led me to revisit one of my favourite popular science books of recent years, The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow. This is an excellent and – trust me – entertaining primer on the basics of probability and statistics that every science graduate ought to know (indeed, given the importance of understanding risk in medicine, the judicial process, etc. – and Mlodinow provides the clearest description of the prosecutor’s fallacy that I’ve read – any well-informed citizen should see it as their duty to be familiar with these principles). But the book’s subtitle, How Randomness Rules our Lives, gives a clue as to Mlodinow’s wider thesis, re. the pre-eminent role that chance plays in picking out the specific path our personal and professional lives wend through the chaos of the possible. And this is chaos in a formal sense, in that outcomes are enormously sensitive to small changes in initial conditions:

When we look back in detail on the major events of our lives, it is not uncommon to be able to identify… seemingly inconsequential random events that led to big changes

Certainly, when I think, for example, of all the jobs I’ve nearly been offered, I can see a panoply of alternative mes living rather different lives. But while I’m sure we can all appreciate that luck (good or bad) has been important in our own life histories, where Mlodinow is very good is in turning this same insight to examine, post hoc, success and failure in others.

For instance, he tracks the company performance of 500 imaginary CEOs, each with exactly the same probability of ‘success’ (however defined) each year; and then uses simple probability to illustrate the wildly differing fortunes of these CEOs after 5 years – differences entirely due to chance. Of course, what happens is that

Executives’ winning years are attributed to their brilliance, explained retroactively through incisive hindsight.

And likewise, the losers are judged to have lost because of their relative lack of talent and ability. And what applies to CEOs applies equally in other walks of life, including sports coaches and, of course, scientists. As Mlodinow puts it:

We miss the effects of randomness in life because when we assess the world, we tend to see what we expect to see. We in effect define degree of talent by degree of success and then reinforce our feelings of causality by noting the correlation.

There’s a good psychological reason why we make this leap from correlation to causation. Mlodinow quotes renowned social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner:

Realising that ‘few people would engage in extended activity if they believed that there were a random connection between what they did an the rewards they achieved,’ Lerner concluded that ‘for the sake of their own sanity,’ people overestimate the degree to which ability can be inferred from success.

Elsewhere, he quotes Bernoulli: “One should not appraise human action on the basis of its results”, but whilst it is easy to agree with Mlodinow’s assertion that “…all who strive to achieve… should be judged more by their abilities than by their success”, it does beg the question, how do we judge ability, if success is not allowed to be a criterion? A further complication (certainly in science), is that I suspect that ability may very well develop as a result of success. For instance, if you succeed (against a field of similarly able candidates) in securing a long-term research fellowship, complete with significant financial, administrative and – well – moral support, chances are you will develop over that time into a much more able scientist that when you started.

The one place where I find myself disagreeing with Mlodinow, however, comes right at the end, where the ‘life lessons’ are expounded, and Mlodinow makes the following claim, regarding the positive effects of realising that chance is important in life:

What I’ve learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.

The basic thesis: that life’s unfair, that some people have all the talent or get the breaks; but through hard work and persistence you can overcome these obstacles to become successful. It’s hard to argue with the basic premise of what is, in effect, the American Dream. But, what’s implicit here is that an ability to work hard is somehow different from any other ability. When this assumption is made about other abilities, it sounds silly (brilliant cricketer Viv Richards was a notoriously poor coach, because he couldn’t understand why his charges weren’t simply able to be brilliant at cricket); but people who thrive on 5 or 6 hours sleep, who are completely driven to succeed, and who dedicate their every waking moment to that end, see this as a state that anyone could achieve if they put their mind to it. My contention is that having that drive is as innate as King Viv’s majestic flick over midwicket.

Paying to publish: what's in it for me?

‘I have no strong opinions on the matter’ is perhaps not the most compelling opening to a blog, but it describes my prevailing attitude to one of the perpetual talking points among publishing scientists: Open Access or not? In fact, I might more appropriately describe my position as ‘agnostic’, given the often evangelical tone adopted by some advocates of Open Acces publication. This agnosticism is most apparent when I have my ‘reader’ hat on. Of course I like to be able to access all of the papers I want to read without leaving my office chair. And I pretty much can. Clearly, it helps to be part of a large and well-resourced University; but on the rare occasions that the library can’t help, and a few minutes online don’t find a solution, it’s pretty easy simply to email authors and ask for a pdf. I find this updated version of the old reprint request postcards to be very effective. So, open access or not, I can generally read what I need to do my job, and seldom notice whether or not a particular paper is OA.

As an author, the situation is slightly more complicated – or, at least, it the division between the two publishing models is more obvious, because I have to pay to publish in an OA journal (typically on the order of $1000+ per paper). The principal benefit is the ability to reach more readers but, as described above, many (even most) of the people who are going to want to read my work, will probably be able to get hold of it anyway (definitely, in fact, if they think to email me). I may gain in casual readers, which is lovely – for instance, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to see on PLoS ONE’s website that the paper I blogged about last week has been viewed >2000 times! – but let’s be brutally pragmatic here: the bottom line is citations, and citations will generally come from those people who can access the paper regardless.

Staunch OA adherents may argue too that it is simply an ethical decision to publish the results of publically funded research somewhere that anyone can read them. I have a certain amount of sympathy for this view (and I certainly think more data should be freely available), but I don’t think it’s a particularly strong argument. The lay audience for most scientific papers is tiny (hell, the academic audience for most is small enough!), not all subscription-based publishers are evil (including many learned societies), and, as I said above, with a little persistance it is almost always possible to get hold of a copy of most published work.

I suppose what I am arguing is that, as an author, my choice of publication is not primarily motivated by its chosen publication model (i.e., OA or subscription). So if I’m going to pay to publish, I’m going to start to expect personal benefits in terms of the aspects of publishing that matter most to me, such as speed (of decisions, and decision-to-publication), and general ease of submission / production.

There is an analogy here with higher education in the UK. When I was an undergraduate, I received a government grant to go to university. It was paltry, of course; but my education was at least free, so we accepted what we got from academics and very, very rarely complained about anything. Since students started to pay fees, it has been noticable that they have become much more demanding, and they expect a certain minimum level of service from academics. (Quite rightly; although some demands are also quite rightly dismissed: ‘can you rearrange the tutorial please Dr Webb, I can’t make Mondays’, etc.)

If authors are routinely paying to publish, I suspect they will increasingly begin to question where exactly their $1000+ are going each time. Little demands from journals will become more of an annoyance. Things like formatting references precisely in accordance with a journal’s style (see comments in Martin Fenner’s blog on Endnote) or fiddling with the format of figures (I spend a lot of time creating appropriate statistical graphics for my work. I have less interest in converting PDFs to 600dpi TIFFs or 9cm wide JPEGs or whatever). Tardy reviews and editorial decisions will no longer be tolerated. The very best standards of typesetting will be expected.

My suspician is that subscription-based publications will coexist with OA journals for years to come. My (altruistic) hope is that the success of the OA movement has made the entire scientific community more aware of the obigation to communicate research findings as freely as possible to the appropriate audience – regardless of where we happen to publish a particular piece of work. My (selfish) hope is that paying to publish in some journals will make the publication process everywhere more and more of an easy ride for us poor authors!