Taking to heart the ad nauseum admonishments to think critically regarding this issue, I put on my well worn critical thinking cap and, using skills from a long ago recieved degree in toxicology, cursorily looked up the list of insecticides used by the Alamosa mosquito abatement program. It took exactly 3 clicks of the mouse.
Malathion, which is known by USEPA to have a strong mortality effect on bees, is in fact used by the folks from the Alamosa district. Permethrin/pyperonyl butoxide mixtures, likewise, are used by the district and are also well documented as toxic to bees. As to whether or no there are "no mosquitos" or "no honeybees" in the area, I'm not here to say. As others have pointed out, that's something for the local entomologists and toxicologists to ascertain, at some financial and temporal expense. But knowing what we know about malathion and permethrin/piperonyl butoxide formulations, it would seem to me to be a supreme lack of critical reasoning to 'assume' that the malathion in use in that district had no effect on the target mosquito species (elsewise, as someone else snarkily pointed out, what a waste of money it's been for all the mosquito districts in North America to have used it for all these decades!! They should go down and get their money back!!!) or the very well documented non target species, honeybees. As for non target effects on grasshoppers, rhinoceri, or other non target species, and whether mosquitos could be keystone species, I'll leave that up to the rest of the audience. I haven't the time. But really, I reply mainly to point out that these effects are not unknown quantities to the field of toxicology....they're pretty well documented, and taught in introductory courses in that discipline. To pooh-pooh the possibility that reduction of honeybee numbers might have something to do with pesticide use in this case seems, well, pretty silly, to say the least. C Rosamond > Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:55:14 -0700 > From: mona...@saber.net > Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Mosquitoes as keystone species? > To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU > > Michael Cooperman wrote: > > > I respectfully disagree with you. It is not wild speculation to posit > > widely applied broad-cast insecticides have impacts to non-target > > organisms, > > You said the mosquito chemical: "would affect other insects > just as strongly" which is speculation. > > Paul Cherubini > El Dorado, Calif. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009
