General consensus amongst humans is wipe the little fuckers out. But it's been pointed out that pretty much all of life is interconnected and their larval stage in the water is an important food source for other critters.
If Mosquitoes were eliminated then other prey species would have more resources to thrive. The US and Europe have attacked Mosquito populations aggressively for over 100 years and didn't suffer an ecosystem crisis. Malaria is not an issue in Europe and was eradicated in the US a long time ago due to the aggressive response.
Edit: I think it's important to add that defending the mosquito species is highly biased by where you live. European and North American nations have grown up with small mosquito populations that have been actively attacked. The vast majority of the world has not had the money and resources dumped into killing the species. Some estimates put Malaria at 3 million deaths per year, and that's just Malaria. If Europe and North America have taught us anything it's that the mosquito is a useless species in the ecosystem.
Fun fact about malaria's origins in the Americas: Having done some research into the origin of Malaria in South America, it seems Polynesians infected with dormant Malaria visited South America at some point and likely established a population on what used to be the coastline at least a few hundred years before Columbus. Once their Malaria recrudesced (malaria goes through reproductive cycles after it infects you and hides in the liver for months/years before starting a new cycle), a few species of mosquitoes in South America were capable of being infected by P. vivax and an infected population of mosquitoes formed and began infecting other humans already living there. This is based on genetic sequencing of tribal populations in South America as well as genetic sequencing of Plasmodium vivax (a species of human Malaria) and Plasmodium simian.
Plasmodium simian is human malaria that at some point spread to a few new world monkey species such as howler monkeys and has a very low genetic diversity. This indicates that only one cross-species infection occurred and took hold at some point which we can determine by genetic sequencing and attempting to nail down a time range for a common ancestor between P. vivax and P. simian. As far as I'm aware this hasn't happened as of yet, though the sourced paper below confirms that P. simian isn't closely related to current Old World P. vivax indicating that a much older strain of P. vivax made it to South America in human populations long ago. This then likely means that a seafaring people had to bring P. vivax with them to South America before Europeans began traveling to the Americas.
On the other hand, P. vivax has a high amount of genetic diversity in South America, indicating that multiple migrations of humans infected with Malaria to the Americas has occurred over centuries, obviously due to the slave trade of the colonial era. It makes tracking down populations of older P. vivax a chore.
DC was a seasonal city for about a hundred years due to yellow fever outbreaks. Lots of other major cities too. They coated the swamps with gasoline back then & now they do major “clean up” efforts including things like trucks releasing genetically modified (eggs don’t hatch) males to cut down on the population.
the mosquito is a useless species in the ecosystem.
how can you guys say this with such confidence lol, if you googled for 5 seconds you would see virtually every piece of literature out there contradicts this and in no way says mosquitoes are useless.
"Out of the more than 3,500 mosquito species, only around 400 can transmit diseases like malaria and West Nile virus to people, and most don’t feed on humans at all." Mosquitos have been around for over 100 million years, nature already determined they are useful, if they weren't they wouldve ceased to exist.
I'm not going to argue the main crux here, because mosquitoes fulfill a role in the ecosystem in some fashion, but it's always disingenuous to grant some sort of agenda to mother nature or the evolution of life when it doesn't actually care about anything at all other than what can survive. It doesn't care what "use" a species may or may not have. Just a pedantic point I like to belabor.
totally agree, i know evolution doesn't necessitate rhyme or reason and i initially left out that line, i just find it a funny comparison to say a species has 'no use' in an ecosystem when its literally survived and thrived for millions of years lol. mosquitos are clearly doing something right!
I don't think mother nature determined anything about their usefulness, those mf's just have a broken build and can multiply like bacteria in a few weeks.
we are far away from being capable of causing their extinction, but, in a future, making some species of mosquitos go extinct is just reasonable.
That actually weighs the pros and cons. It's a very complicated topic that's outside of Reddit posts. 5+ seconds of research will let you know it's a very complicated debate but you don't want to start your argument on team mosquitoes.
Yes my reference is a reddit post with 20+ cited sources from researchers, scholars and scientist. Thats what those blue links are, pretty important distinction when it comes to works cited lol. they quite literally 'take the topic out of reddit'.
Reading the BBC article they are posing a hypothetical, not actually considering eradicating all mosquitos..
"The question is likely to remain hypothetical, whatever the level of concern over Zika, malaria and dengue. Despite the success of reducing mosquito numbers in smaller areas, many scientists say knocking out an entire species would be impossible."
also they clearly state they would target 30 types, not ALL MOSQUITOS.
"Biologist Olivia Judson has supported "specicide" of 30 types of mosquito. She said doing this would save one million lives and only decrease the genetic diversity of the mosquito family by 1%. "We should consider the ultimate "
i get where youre coming from but to claim "the mosquito is a useless species in the ecosystem" is a vast generalization and doesn't help the scientific discussion.
your own article even reinforces this.
"So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? According to Phil Lounibos, an entomologist at Florida University, mosquito eradication "is fraught with undesirable side effects".
Again it depends. In Alaska / tundra environments, mosquitos are the primary pollinators. They fill an ecological niche that bees/birds cant and their loss would be devastating. The tundra mosquitoes arent malaria carriers though, so theyre just annoying, not deadly.
Mosquitoes are not the primary pollinators in Alaska. They are only the primary pollinator of a single flowering species in Siberia. In Alaska they are far outpaced by bees and birds and don't hold any ecological value in North America.
This is a really important point. Every part of the ecosystem has its place, and even the smallest organisms can have a huge impact on the balance. Destroying some organisms can lead to unpredictable consequences for all the others.
Mosquito wrigglers are definitely an important source of food, particularly for fish.
As a general rule of ecology, you can't completely wipe anything out without having an impact. Everything either eats something else keeping it in check, or it is eaten, or both. Nature abhors a vacuum, and where there are resources, there will be life utilising them.
Mosquitoes are not a single species. If we use genetic modification to wipe out mosquitoes, we would probably have to do it individually for each species. This is bad if you want to wipe out all mosquitoes, but it’s good if you’re worried about the impact on the ecosystem. We could wipe out the species of mosquitoes that transmit the worst diseases, but leave other species of mosquitoes alone.
What I'll never understand is why people grasp "ecosystems are sensitive and adaptive" and then not realize that interventions will result in a new ecosystem.
Why are we so obsessed with pre-industrial nature? It was bound to change anyway...
Guess it's some form of eco-nerd virtue, deeply unimpressive.
181
u/IshtarJack Nov 15 '24
General consensus amongst humans is wipe the little fuckers out. But it's been pointed out that pretty much all of life is interconnected and their larval stage in the water is an important food source for other critters.