One of the types was introduced in a not very distant past, so it doesn't seem like a bigger disruption than what we've already done.

Case in point, they are now known to metabolize ddt, and I think this was discovered 20 years ago.

And any fungus will try to evolve with them... and theoretically the local species have no defense?

Anyway, this fungus is already endemic in California, and I believe California has a major problem with this pest. I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a billion fruit flies active in California mid-summer.

As I said in a sibling comment, let's do some safety validation & deployment testing, but also let's not forget this is already out there.

On the one hand, this suggests the genus is capable of adapting to many hosts. On the other, if some Entomophthora species are already endemic in Australia, then presumably the host-jumping risk is already present. Either way, it seems wise to be cautious.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/parasitic...

From the sources I looked at, it seems to be a matter of fact that E.muscae infects multiple hosts. Furthermore, does the fact that the genus Entomophthora contains many fungi which collectively infect many species not suggest that they can, and have, jumped species? It seems implausible that, just within this genus, each of its species independently evolved to target one host, and a species that can do this with one host would seem better positioned, compared to any that do not have this capability at all, to evolve into something targeting a different host (the point is that all these different Entomophthora evolved from something, and it is most likely a single common ancestor with the ability.)

> Each zombie-creating fungus species evolved to match a specific insect, so unique strains have little effect on an organism except for the one they evolved to infect. For example, a cordyceps that evolved to infect an ant in Thailand can’t infect a different ant species in Florida.

It is very plausible that the fungus has been around long enough to have evolved with the insects.

The main reason why a cross-species jump is so unlikely for a fungus which induces specific neurological effects is that the mechanism is not intelligent but tuned to the host species’ neurology. The fungus releases specific chemicals at specific times. In the correct host species this results in the desired behavior.

Trying to use the same chemical machinery to control a species which doesn’t share the neurology almost exactly is like trying to run a Windows executable on a Mac.

Importantly, you cannot evolve the machinery bit-by-bit if your life cycle is dependent upon it. Jump to a species with a different neurology would require such a large number of changes simultaneously that it’s just not plausible when anything less would result in a failure to reproduce.

So, yeah, it's really dangerous, but probably only for these species of fruit fly.

I'm not suggesting we (Australia) would not validate it against other related species, including native fruit flies, and then do a risk / benefit analysis based on those findings.

Regular inoculation of trap bait/fruit, regional dispersal schedules, etc may be all that's required to knock pest population numbers down periodically.

Hobby?

https://newatlas.com/science/fly-brains-hack-remote-controll...

Finally we can create a cyberpunk Beelzebub!

But this time, nothing will go wrong.

> I'm really looking forward to deploy-and-mostly-forget bio controls for pests that we can deploy at landmass level.

Did we just forget how Queensland already tried with with Cane Toads and it went horribly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactoblastis_cactorum

Perhaps it isn't a black and white issue after all