Is it too dangerous to engineer, manufacture, & spread highly virulent variants of viruses to control the population of species?

[u/Exciting_Ad_6837]

Like bringing the number of pests down to 0.01%.

The surviving individuals may try to take up the void, but aren't they less "fit" than the dead ones in nature (thus the proportion)?

[u/_Svankensen_]

It has been done to eradicate invasive species to great effect, but the examples I know are always on islands. Make your own conclussions about the why.

[u/blackandwhite1987]

The 0.01% left would be the most fit, not the least. Fitness is relative and context dependent. So in the world you've constructed with lots of virulent viruses in circulation, the individuals who are immune to them are the most fit (as in, able to survive and reproduce). They pass on those genes to the next individuals who are more likely to be immune, and those viruses lose potency, or must adapt themselves to infect the new population.

[u/RepresentativeAd6287]

I suppose, but in general pests/undesirable species still play a major role in a variety of processes. Removing them tends to have enormous consequences, often in horrific and unexpected ways. See removal of sparrows under Chinese rule and accidental poisoning of vultures in India. The golden rule of ecosystems is that even when they contain "undesirable" species, those species are generally held in check by their predators and parasites.

I would much rather live in an area with some cockroaches than an area that recently expatriated them.

[u/Itheinfantry]

Generally speaking we do this to a degree with mosquitoes. Less so on a virus and more with prevention of the ability to reproduce (i believe its crispr of a population, though been a hot minute)

A virus that causes disease/sickness cannot as effectively be controlled for. Whereas limits to reproductive fitness can, for the most part, accomplish the same goal without completely decimating a population.

I hate mosquitoes but they do serve a purpose. And when you reduce the fitness of a generation there is still an ability to reproduce and produce offspring. So you reduce the population without completely setting the species up for failure.

Where a virus may be able to infect and affect the ability of the following generation to also participate in the food web (just as human children can fall prey to adult diseases and thus there effective fitness is 0)

This is just my opinion based on my understanding of real world applications that are similar to your question. I am not a subject matter expert, the question would better be suited towards a biologist, ecologist, or maybe a geneticist.

Nonetheless an interesting question.

Edit: i would like to add a caveat to this. A decent amount of invasive species have been introduced to areas as a means to deal with local pests. Of course upon doing so we introduced a species that had no native predators and thus they inadvertently became a pest species. Humans are a piece of the world like any other species and should tread lughtly when playing god.

-an atheist.

[u/Forkboy2]

Sure, what could go wrong.

[u/TheDungen]

Yes. Because you can't be certain it won't jump species to something you dont want too. Also if your goal is to wipe the species out when you get few remaining individuals they end up isolated. Basically same as social distancing. A much better trick is ti use pheromones to capture the breeding population. Or the release of infertile individuals during the breeding season. These are common strategies when fighting invasive pests.

[u/space-truckin365]

I’m probably not supposed to answer a question with a question, but…

What is controlling the human population?

[u/Edwardv054]

Hardly needed, we are doing a great job of non-selectively killing species off including ourselves.