Wallace and Professor Agassiz

Being the “tasty treat “ of a predator further up the food chain is not especially enjoyable to consider, especially if one is him or herself the “feasted upon.”  Wallace (1891, 5) quoting the work of “Professor Agassiz”:  “Those which are made to be the food of others cannot have been created in the same proportions as those who live upon them.  Those which are everywhere found in innumerable specimens must have been introduced in numbers capable of maintaining their normal proportions….”.  This is referred to as the “harmony of numerical numbers” found in nature.

Whether a person subscribes to a Creationist or an Evolutionist model of “how things came to be,” this law of harmony helps give definition to the reason and purpose of even feared invertebrates like mosquitoes.  Gene editing with CRISPR technology may be able to eliminate mosquitoes and thus the worldwide disease malaria, which kills millions of humans annually.  Is this a good idea?  Would the elimination of mosquitoes disturb the law of harmony?

Bibliography:

Wallace, Alfred.  Darwinism:  An exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with some of its applications.  London:  Macmillan and Co., 1891.