The (Potentially) Calamitous Case of the Crickets of Kauai

Field crickets in Kauai are facing a bit of a crisis. Flesh-eating maggots (Ormia ochracea) have invaded the Hawaiian island, and they have begun devouring the crickets -- from inside out. The maggots are only able to locate and parasitize those male crickets that sing to attract females. They cannot find silent crickets.

Imagine you are a male cricket. You are obviously very concerned about your own fate and the fate of your (future or present) offspring. (You are a cricket, mind you, so you probably aren't tremendously concerned about the fate of Uncle Jiminy or his offspring). What do you do? If you keep rubbing your wings together and calling attention to yourself, you'll end up infested and childless! On the other hand, if you stay quiet, you won't become infected, but you greatly diminish your chances of finding a mate. What decision do you make?

You don't decide! (You're a cricket, remember?) Instead, over many generations, the differential survival and reproduction of you and your conspecifics yield an optimal mating strategy. In this case, natural selection has started to weed out singers in favor of mutes. Male crickets with noiseless, female-style wings have become more abundant in the island population.

So now it comes down to a race. If the noiseless crickets can successfully elude the parasites, the parasitic species will go extinct, and the crickets will be left to prosper. On the other hand, the mute crickets may not be able to procreate, and they might go extinct before the population of parasites has kicked the bucket.

The end of this story has not yet been told. For us, the result is not terribly consequential. The lessons embedded within this story are the true take-aways for us humans.

In previous posts, Norian has pointed out that overpopulation is a human dilemma similar to that faced by the crickets (and, for that matter, by the parasites). I think Norian's premise is pretty solid: in a world of finite resources, the current rates of population growth and food/good consumption are simply unsustainable over the long haul. Some might debate what "the long haul" actually means, but the idea of a limit to human prosperity on Earth is ultimately unshakeable.

So, like the crickets, the current course of action -- the status quo -- is a path to the grave. The human alternative -- global fertility police enforcement -- is like the male crickets' alternative -- mute wings -- in that the benefits come at some cost, namely, reduced procreation.

But there are some fundamental differences between the case of Kauai and the case of people. (I have hinted at some of these above in bolded print.)

1. Humans tend to care for other people. Sure, we're not as altruistic-acting as termites, but Americans, for instance, really don't want to see Africans die, and they often spend a great deal of money trying to make sure that doesn't happen. They aren't callous to the suffering of others.
2. For the above reason, we don't want the struggle for existence that would select for certain traits that would help us fix our problems. Struggle for existence = poverty, starvation, disease, and death. Not good. Let's not go there.
3. Unlike field crickets, humans can make decisions, even at the level of nations (though with decreasing effectiveness as we scale up the size of the decision-making bodies). Humans don't have to wait for natural selection to produce favorable results for the species. They can use cognition and communication to cooperate to achieve their ends.

Humans have foresight, empathy, and agency that field crickets do not. Humans can act to steer clear of catastrophes (like maggots) under favorable circumstances.

The current condition of the species is not ideal for cooperation to curb overpopulation. As Norian observed, an outright global population police is probably not a viable option due to a conflict of interest between baby-loving individuals and the baby-loathing groups of which they are a part. In spite of human "altruism," people prioritize themselves and their kids over all else, just like the crickets. So what should be the course of action? How can we harness self-interest for common benefit?

I'm a fan of the "nudging" idea, a concept from the field of behavioral economics. An example of nudging is allowing people to smoke at any age, but requiring them to go through lots of paperwork to get approval. Nudges discourage rather than prohibit less-than-optimal behaviors. In the case of overpopulation, governments might find success in subsidizing abortions and contraceptives while taxing people for having more than X # of children. These initiatives would be easier to implement and enforce than any anti-birth global task force. Also, nudging laws would hopefully allow people to maintain more of their freedom than authoritarian, hegemonic population control.

One final point:

As Norian emphasized, a number of people say that the population will equilibrate on its own. This is a true statement. Norian is right to question whether equilibrium population will be one favorable to human life. Twelve billion people? Really? Is that good for everyone?

I want to propose an alternative equilibrium: 0. No people left. That's equilibrium, too, and about 90% of the species that have ever lived are extinct. Now's not the time for hubris. We don't want this to happen to us. We shouldn't rest on the laurels of equilibrium as an excuse not to think about serious, life-threatening phenomena. The only way to ensure our future prosperity is to look at ourselves in the context history and the context of our earthly and cosmological environments.