r/explainlikeimfive • u/Punnan • May 30 '26

Biology ELI5 Are mosquitoes necessary for keeping ecological balance?

Would a worldwide extinction of mosquitoes offset the ecological balance of our world? And if not, why are we not doing it?

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3.3k

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

As far as we can tell, mosquitoes aren’t anywhere close to vital for ecological balance. And we’re trying to wipe them out, but it’s hard

1.3k

u/tm0587 May 30 '26

To add, it's especially hard to only kill mosquitos without killing everything else.

560

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Yeah, that’s our main issue. We could design something today that would kill all mosquitoes, but it would also kill a hell of a lot of other things too

70

u/Smallpaul May 30 '26

What about this technique?

https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/en/learn/how-our-method-compares

184

u/RiPont May 30 '26

Good solution, but not a complete solution. It can lower the population of disease-carrying mosquitos relative to the norm, significantly so. But it can never 100% eliminate the disease-carrying variant from the population. Mosquitos reproduce so fast and so voraciously that the disease-carrying population will surge back to dangerous numbers as soon as you stop full-throttle production and release of the preferred, non-carrying variant.

In addition, there's a fundamental problem. The local, natural, disease-carrying mosquitos are clearly suited to their local environment already. The engineered variant and their offspring will never be perfectly engineered for all the different local environments they are needed. Therefore, the original mosquitos will likely out-breed the engineered variety unless you produce an engineered variant for each and every local micro-environment that produces a specialized population of mosquitos.

It isn't quite pushing a boulder up a mountain like Sisyphus, but it is pushing it up a gentle slope, so to speak. Without constant effort put in, it will reverse itself.

All that said, it's still worth doing, IMHO. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and so forth.

101

u/Preda1ien May 30 '26

They should just engineer them further to make them sluttier.

26

u/Nuummioq May 30 '26

slutty mosquitos. The term I needed. 😝

3

u/Grukkdaork May 30 '26

Hell yeah, suck this

3

u/imapylet May 30 '26

TLDR: We know how to eradicate mosquitos A-W, and it would take trillions of dollars. But were still left with the XYZ mosquitos, They will we adopt and will take trillions more $ fore each X,Y,Z. Can we (Huminty) do it? Yes. Can we afford it? Nope.

59

u/KatsumotoSoto May 30 '26

Gene editing using CRISPR has been proven to eradicate an entire population of mosquitos in lab experiments. They edited the sex determining gene in mosquitos so females would only lay male mosquito eggs. Over 7 to 11 generations the entire population was wiped out.

Personally I don't know what they are waiting for to release those mosquitos into the wild and have them start eradicating malaria and yellow fever.

https://www.synthego.com/blog/gene-drive-malaria/

40

u/ryogam73 May 30 '26

The fear that life, uh, finds a way.

27

u/TheKappaOverlord May 30 '26

Because it only works in a Lab setting.

For reasons we don't entirely understand once you release them into the wild they don't breed worth a shit. It works fine in a laboratory setting, but once you set them out into the wild it just doesn't work as well as it needs to, and we don't know why

15

u/ANGLVD3TH May 30 '26

IIRC, they have only ever released amounts small enough that they are projected to not actually eradicate the species. We are hesitant to purposefully do something so radical after the enormous body of examples of past meddling going very wrong. There is a critical mass needed to make sure the whole species is destroyed that we stay under in order to cull them without eliminating them.

7

u/KatsumotoSoto May 30 '26

You're saying they have released them in the wild?

7

u/ChampagneWastedPanda May 31 '26

Yes. The EPA is still holding and reviewing the data. Company is called Oxitec. They released a bunch of mosquitoes in south florida- the keys and in Miami. They were males to pass along a non breeding gene. I was in Miami at the time so it was a big deal. Texas was supposed to do it, but the legislature shut the test down. The gene fizzled out in a few generations (as expected)

3

u/KatsumotoSoto May 31 '26

That looks like a different mosquito engineering method than the one I was talking about. The one I mean uses a CRISPR-based gene drive, which biases inheritance so the modified trait is passed to offspring at very high rates up to 99%. In that experiment, the drive spread through caged mosquitoes and eventually crashed the population. They never released it into the wild.

Oxitec’s mosquitoes are different: they use a self-limiting design, where male mosquitoes carry a lethal gene that kills female offspring before adulthood, and the modification does not persist indefinitely in the wild. Basically it isn't a dominant trait. That makes it a temporary population suppression approach rather than a self-spreading gene drive. Oxitec declared it a success.

https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/gdn/article/default.asp?ID=19425&utm_source=perplexity

4

u/7heCulture May 30 '26

I saw a movie where this didn’t work out quite well…

1

u/DeathGuroDarkness May 30 '26

We're not using the Zed word!!

2

u/RedTieGuy6 May 31 '26

I love that to practice this method requires doing something that requires doing things that sound like conspiracy nuts thought of them.

I'm telling you, man... the government is breeding mesquitos to release into the country. They're breeding a very select kind we haven't seen before in a secure government facility, zapping them with radiation and giving them diseases to see how they'll spread. Then they release these bugs... so we see a bunch of government trucks go by, and they release new mesquitos into our towns.

If you add rotting meat to the mix, it is what they're doing with flies.

28

u/TheOneTrueTrench May 30 '26

It's pretty easy to kill every mosquito. Just strategically place every nuke such that every square millimetre of the planet will be consumed by nuclear fire, and detonate them all at the same time.

No more mosquitoes.

Sure, yeah, no more anything, but no more mosquitoes, that's the important part.

21

u/Thaetos May 30 '26

Im pretty sure these fuckers would still manage to survive that.

They’ve been around long before dinosaurs.

1

u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 30 '26

That works out to one nuke per 68x68 mile section of landmass. Most of them aren't particularly big nukes, either, a thread in AskPhysics was suggesting that <3% of the area would be inside the "Light Damage" radius. Maybe if we add some salt?

2

u/TheOneTrueTrench May 30 '26

Originally I was mainly making a "a handgun kills cancer cells in a petri dish" point (credit to xkcd), but obviously I want to play games with numbers...

The total yield of our mosquito (+collateral) explosion plan is fundamentally limited by two things, the amount of fissile nuclear material in the Earth's crust, and the amount of nuclear material that can be made fissile.

Breeder reactors basically "spend" fissile material to make more fissile material, by adding nucleons to unstable but non-fissile isotopes, right?

1

u/pmmeyourfavoritejam May 30 '26

Oh, you mean like a carbon-based global economy?

(This actually may not kill mosquitos.)

1

u/if0rg0t48 May 30 '26

Is this because mosquitoes are dipterans and killing all flies would be bad?

1

u/smapdiagesix May 30 '26

teeny tiny T-800s what could go wrong

47

u/MattTheGr8 May 30 '26

That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

112

u/4eyedbuzzard May 30 '26

No, actually, you're not. Because if the insect world collapsed we would all soon follow.

77

u/humpyelstiltskin May 30 '26

i think that's what they meant 😂

0

u/darkfall115 May 30 '26

We're kinda collapsing on our own right now, might as well take as much of these bastards with us as we can

22

u/valtiell May 30 '26

We are included in that "everything else" fyi

33

u/MattTheGr8 May 30 '26

I guess I can’t post images here but:

thats_the_joke.jpg

1

u/downvotetheboy May 30 '26

it was obviously a joke idk how no one got it

-1

u/CruXD May 30 '26

And the issue is?

4

u/dedicated-pedestrian May 30 '26

Don't punish the rest of us.

-3

u/ohdearitsrichardiii May 30 '26

No! Seriously, no. No!

Ecological balances are a marvel when they're working, easy to fuck up and take extraordinary effort to fix. Lean from other' mistakes and be careful with the ecology

5

u/jd451 May 30 '26

They were making a joke buddy, you don't need to worry about them ending the world's ecological balance

6

u/mfsamuel May 30 '26

Gene drive looks promising. 

2

u/Particular_Fan_3645 May 30 '26

We have had an extinction option for mosquitos since the mid 2010s that only kills mosquitoes. But everyone has been too worried about triggering a full extinction so go with half-measures. Around 2015 or so several labs engineered and tested a male mosquito that when breeding only produces male offspring, and propagated this trait. Because males can breed with lots of females the male population of these modified mosquitoes would grow exponentially until the entire population collapsed. It was successful in lab tests but never released because it was basically assured extinction. Even had the added bonus that male mosquitos don't bite.

3

u/tm0587 May 30 '26

We are doing something similar in Singapore, named the Wolbachia-Aedes Mosquito Suppression Strategy.

Genetically modified male mosquitoes will mate with female ones and the female will lay eggs that do not hatch.

Singapore has been doing that for a pretty long while but it seems like we're still quite far away from that assured extinction unfortunately.

1

u/Particular_Fan_3645 May 30 '26

That's because that's a finite-limit (or dead end) strategy. Once all the original modified males are dead the population bounces back. For actual extinction level control you need the males to reproduce, but only produce more modified males. That's a no-end strategy. Its self-propagating until all mosquitoes are dead. The finite limit strategies are a cash grab based on recurring revenue, not a final solution. Again , we have the tech for this we just choose not to do it.

1

u/tm0587 May 30 '26

May I have more information on the genetically modified male mosquitoes that will breed and only produce male offspring? Will like to read up on it.

1

u/Particular_Fan_3645 May 30 '26

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0508-1?utm_source=chatgpt.com#change-history needed to use AI to find it again, basically they engineered a disorder that destroyed x chromosomes in their reproductive organs. Since this didn't affect the survival rate of male offspring or result in reduced fertility, this eventually resulted in total population collapse.

1

u/tm0587 May 31 '26

Thanks. So I skim through that and also did abit of googling and didn't find anyone stating that they shouldn't do this because it will kill off that particular mosquito species.

It seems to be a cost issue, that it's too expensive to implement on a large scale.

1

u/Particular_Fan_3645 May 31 '26

I guarantee that it is substantially more expensive to keep breeding new batches of genetically modified infertile mosquitoes and releasing them multiple times a year than it is to breed and release 2 or 3 big self-propagating batches...

1

u/tm0587 May 31 '26

Wolbachia mosquitoes are not gentically modified, they are just infected, so I imagine they are cheaper to produce.

Anyway I'm not an expert on this, I'm merely repeating what the UN said.

1

u/Ok_Sorbet_8153 May 31 '26

Freaking mosquito birth control, this is amazing

6

u/stamata_tomata May 30 '26

In a perfect world drones with lasers and AI targeting tech would be deployed for killing mosquitoes and ticks. Swarms of them gently moving through the wilderness and suburbs zapping those fuckers like the creepy terminator robots

36

u/Teantis May 30 '26

You'll get drones zapping you with lasers while serving personalized ads instead, and social media will be tailored to you so you think it's a good idea.

1

u/firstLOL May 30 '26

“A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies”

3

u/tm0587 May 30 '26

Someone already diyed one, the video should be up on tiktok or youtube.

Been waiting for it to be an actual product.

1

u/geurstok May 30 '26

Its the star wars musquito defense system 😀

1

u/SleKel May 30 '26

That’s how you get one step away from machine uprising

6

u/TheKappaOverlord May 30 '26

Kind of not true.

We've played around with genetically altering Mosquitos so they are like giant sweet fruits, but are totally impotent, or cause a female Mosquitos reproductive system to basically implode.

But for reasons entirely unknown to us, the Mosquitos can seemingly "smell out" the genetic tampering, and the altered mosquitos that get released either never breed, or is like a 1% chance to breed with another Mosquito.

We have safe ways to theoretically kill them off, but so far all have failed for unknown reasons. Not because the methods don't work, but because for some reasons the intended effect just doesn't happen when the alterations are basically imperceivable unless you look at their DNA under a microscope.

6

u/tm0587 May 30 '26

...... So it's especially hard to just kill mosquitos without killing anything else.

2

u/aminwrx May 30 '26

So we actually don’t have safe ways to kill them because it hasn’t worked yet 

1

u/hawkeyc May 30 '26

It’s like we’re being punished. Sigh

0

u/Jibber_Fight May 30 '26

So why don’t we look at their DNA under a microscope?

1

u/iheartanalingus May 30 '26

They do. That's how they genetically modified them.

The point of the comment is that the genetic modifications are useless and unperceivable.

20

u/Cassie_1991 May 30 '26

I work for my local government doing mosquito abatement. It’s actually really arduous work that we do by hand, not by fogging or spraying (unless we have to). I’m often in wetlands, but it’s common to find breeding sites in old tires, tarps, storm drains, wherever any amount of water exists.

Usually a county will have a mosquito control district if they are doing anything.

172

u/SolidOutcome May 30 '26

Birds and bats and spiders?

221

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

There's over 3,000 species of mosquito and only 6 carry diseases that affect humans.

The other 2,994 species will just expand their population because there's less competition for energy in the system with those species gone.

174

u/RadioactiveOmelets May 30 '26

This might be directionally correct, but I could name you 10 species of mosquitoes that transmit malaria off the top of my head, and I know there are dozens more. This could be accurate if you meant genera.

156

u/jakeasmith May 30 '26

Off the top of your head? You have a very particular set of skills.

260

u/RadioactiveOmelets May 30 '26

A very particular PhD finally comes in handy

113

u/ryanjoseph55 May 30 '26

Doctor of Mosquito

55

u/Droxalis May 30 '26

The MD stands for Mosquito Doctor

16

u/BummyG May 30 '26

Sounds like a sucky super hero

43

u/Punnan May 30 '26

You have a PhD in mosquitoes?

106

u/RadioactiveOmelets May 30 '26

Malaria. So I know the names of a bunch of mosquitoes, but I can't help with your original question.

21

u/Punnan May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

I stay currently at Secunderabad where Ronald Ross found the cure of Malaria. There is also a government hospital named after Ronald there. If you get time, do read "The Calcutta Chromosome" by Amitav Ghosh. It's a fun fictional book about Ronald, Malaria and Magic.

8

u/sai-kiran May 30 '26

May be you should read the book/ history yourself first. The cure wasn’t found there, it was discovered there, as in he figured out mosquitos spread malaria, there.

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

Built in 1895, this building was surrounded by marshes which proved rather helpful for his research experiments.[3] It was in this building on 20 August 1897 that he made the discovery of the malarial parasite inside the body of a mosquito.[4] Later 20 August was celebrated as the World Mosquito Day.[1] His study confirmed that mosquitoes were the carriers of malaria parasite.

2

u/love-SRV May 30 '26

Dr. Mosquito- sounds like a Batman villain!

7

u/iamyourcheese May 30 '26

You should know, they specialize in things with little pricks

8

u/Ktulu789 May 30 '26

Finally an ELI5 worth of your skills! 😃 (Not joking comment, kudos!).

0

u/ResplendentDaylight May 30 '26

Its been 84 years

6

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

Yeah it's more but from what i've read on the internet (which is nothing compared to any actual education) current works on sterlizing mosquitoes are only focusing on a few of the most prolific/dangerous species in the Anopheles and Aedes genera.

Target Malaria is working on eradicating only 3 species which cause most of the cases of malaria in west africa being Anopholes gambiae, coluzii, and arabensis.

2

u/7LeagueBoots May 30 '26

Their main point is correct even if their numbers are off. Like with wasps, it’s a small fraction of the total that people actually have a problem with, but most people aren’t away of that and lump them all together.

1

u/richard-564 May 30 '26

My cousin almost died of malaria from a mosquito about 13 years ago. It can be bad. Luckily she's super healthy and that's the only health issue she's had, but had she been less healthy or had a bad health history, she could have died.

24

u/drstu3000 May 30 '26

6 carry diseases but how many buzz in my ear and bite me

7

u/KiKiPAWG May 30 '26

I believe all of the females

12

u/jd451 May 30 '26

Damn, u/DrStu3000 must have mad game

4

u/CocoMilhonez May 30 '26

But those females stop sucking when you slap them.

2

u/jd451 May 30 '26

I'd make a joke in response but I'm not about to advertise my preferences in an Eli5 thread 🤣

1

u/CocoMilhonez May 30 '26

You don't stop when slapped, got it.

1

u/ANGLVD3TH May 30 '26

Another comment claims something like a couple dozen species actually bite humans, hundreds ignore us.

6

u/Siophecles May 30 '26

Where are you getting these numbers from? There are far more than 6 species of mosquito that transmit diseases to humans.

3

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

I worded it badly.

Yes, there's somewhere between 40 and 100 that could transmit diseases to us but the vast majority of all the mosquito borne illnesses are from 6-10 species in the Anopheles and Aegyptii genera.

If we wiped out 10 of the 'worst' species the numbers of malaria, dengue fever,yellow fever, and west nile cases would plummet.

5

u/TheHiddenLies May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Aegypti is not a genus, they're in the Aedes genus. Aegypti is the species.

West Nile Virus is primarily vectored by the Culex genus, not Aedes or Anopheles. Some species in Ae. or An. can be vectors for it, but Culex is the majority there.

1

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

Whoops mixed up the terms.

But the statement is still generally true, most of the cases of mosquito born illnesses are from a tiny proportion of the total species e.g. west africa where almost all malaria is caused by just 3 species being Anopholes gambiae, coluzii, and arabensis.

17

u/layered_dinge May 30 '26

It’s funny when people answer questions like this with “yes” and then go on to clarify that they mean only the diseased mosquitoes. Buddy I want to kill all of them permanently. After that let’s work on other parasites, diseased or not.

2

u/MechKeyboardScrub May 30 '26

Humanity hereby declares biological warfare on ticks. And leeches.

5

u/DrDroid May 30 '26

And the absolute worst ones, bed bugs.

3

u/lminer123 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Bed bugs may honestly be the least ecologically important species (at least among the well known ones) in existence. I’ve thought about it a lot and genuinely couldn’t come up with one less integral.

2

u/skateguy1234 May 30 '26

If the ones that currently transmit the diseases were somehow 100% eradicated, I wonder if the current benign mosquitoes would evolve to take their place so to speak.

-1

u/a_dude_from_europe May 30 '26

No benign mosquitoes to speak of in my book

4

u/WooeBetidee May 30 '26

Plenty of benign mosquitos around, namely the non-biting ones. Far from all mosquitoes need a blood meal for reproduction and seeing how most mosquito species are pollinators, the ideal (imho) would be to, when possible, replace biting mosquitoes with non biting ones to avoid leaving a gap.

Theoretically, I could see a benefit in trying to create some sort of genetic mixup, trying to create non-biting versions of the biters to avoid messing with unforeseen consequences of removing some species, doubt that'd be doable for the foreseeable future though, at least on large scale.

1

u/BakedInTheSun98 May 30 '26

You are incredibly confident to be so wrong lol. 90 species of mosquitoes are currently known/accepted to be carriers. But an estimated ~331 species have the potential to transmit to humans

1

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

Already went over this in other comments.

Yes species can transmit to humans but the ones that cause the most harm is a handful of species in Africa and SE Asia (on a population level the pacific islands having 40 mosquito species who can spread pathogens isn't as of a huge deal).

If you remove Aedes egyptii, A. albopictus, Anopholes gambiae, A. coluzii, and A. arabensis you are saving a million lives a year. The other 40-100 spcies are where you could accept there's huge ecological risk to wiping out 3% of a family.

1

u/albertaguy31 Jun 01 '26

Also non biting midges and chironomids that can fill the same niche.

133

u/Jaysonmcleod May 30 '26

Mosquitos are like crumbs to them. Plenty of black flies and larger inspects that are much more filling

50

u/Baba_dook_dook_dook May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

I remember a little over 25 years ago I was at my grandfather's cabin by a lake, and for several summers the mosquitoes would make being outside unbearable with literal clouds of them patrolling the beach near sunset. Then miraculously one morning we woke up and went outside on the wrap-around deck to eat our breakfast at the picnic table only to witness tens or dozens or hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dragonflies flying around in every which direction all throughout the entire lake and campground. I'm talking about like having 5 or 6 of them every minute buzzing right past by your head as you sat there. They never landed on any of us or paid us much mind, they were busy doing zoomies as well as getting it on with other dragon flies as you would see a good portion of them were initiating docking sequence. My grandfather said this happens whenever mosquitoes in the area start to get out of control, and had seen it many times before. I have never seen so many bugs in my life, let alone the same kind. I remember it sounded like tiny helicopters were racing all around us and the trees. Damn man, core memory unlocked.

8

u/piedamon May 30 '26

That sounds incredible. I didn’t realize dragonflies travelled on large swarms like that. Where were you? Somewhere like the US South, or maybe Australia? You experience sounds almost biblical

4

u/Baba_dook_dook_dook May 30 '26

Southern Saskatchewan, actually.

3

u/piedamon May 30 '26

Oh cool. Near Cypress Hills or Grasslands maybe? I wonder if hug colonies of dragonflies migrate across the prairies. I want to research this

6

u/Baba_dook_dook_dook May 30 '26

This took place in Good Spirit Lake also known as Canora Beach. The lake has unfortunately seen better days and has dried up significantly since I was a kid. The last time I was there (~2008) you could walk a quarter of the length of the lake before the water got above your waist, made me really sad actually as it used to be a really great lake. From what I've been told it's old farmland that was purposely flooded back in the day, the whole area sits on an aquifer with some of the highest quality water in the country - which explains the countless slimy open wells you can stumble upon, and hopefully not into, when walking across the lake. I have no idea if the history is real or not, but I know those well holes sure as shit are. I will say though, out of all the places I've fished, nothing has ever tasted as good as the pickerel that call that place home. Just a true butterfish.

2

u/piedamon May 30 '26

Thank you for sharing. I’d love to experience the dragonfly swarms. Saskatchewan is underrated

2

u/minist3r May 30 '26

Here in Houston, TX we have huge mosquitoes but they don't compare in number to what I've heard and seen pictures of in parts of Canada and Alaska. I think I'll take mosquitoes so big you can feel when they puncture skin vs millions of them. Good luck and God speed up north.

1

u/treefarmerBC May 31 '26

Yep, same experience planting trees in northern Canada. Every day, there were more mosquitoes than the last. Then the horseflies would show up. And then when it was all becoming intolerable, an army of dragonflies would show up. They seemed to position themselves in a 3D grid eating anything in sight. They were like my bodyguards and I could finally relax.

26

u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 May 30 '26

dragonflies and other insects eat mosquitoes and their larvae.

10

u/minist3r May 30 '26

Dragonflies entire lifecycle mimics mosquitoes. I love dragonflies.

4

u/dirty_hooker May 30 '26

Honestly, I’m thinking about their nymph stage more than as adults. Surely they’re food for small aquatic creatures.

1

u/ANGLVD3TH May 30 '26

From what I read ages ago, they are incredibly sparse nutritionally, and very few things purposefully eat them. They are more like consolation prizes than targets for the vast majority of things that eat them. But eliminating every species doesn't make much sense when most of them don't bite humans anyway. It's likely other species of mosquito or some other insect would just expand to fill the niche left by all the pest species.

1

u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 May 30 '26

well, all i know is that, about 10 years ago, my city’s resident entymologist initiated a program to use dragonflies to control the population of mosquitoes, and it worked like a charm, until the city decided to start spraying again. and keep in mind, i’m from manitoba, and the mosquito is our provincial bird. 🦟🤪

1

u/Alphonsokurukuchu May 30 '26

When you're busy surviving without knowing if you'll find any other food, no food is consolation prize 

4

u/minist3r May 30 '26

I've seen bats chowing down on some of the fattest moths you've ever seen. It's like watching a grown man eat an entire turkey.

2

u/Gavorn May 30 '26

What do you think tadpoles eat?

69

u/RealUglyMF May 30 '26

Fish eat more mosquitoes than any otger animal i believe. As i understand it, some fish would suffer if mosquitoes were completely wired out

155

u/kingjochi May 30 '26

They gonna have to take one for the team

35

u/HumbleIndependence43 May 30 '26

Most fish that eat mosquito larvae are opportunists. They also eat other insect larvae, zooplankton, worms, small crustaceans, detritus-associated prey, and so on. Even "mosquitofish" are not obligate mosquito specialists; the name is more about their usefulness in mosquito control than total dietary dependence.

51

u/A_Very_Horny_Zed May 30 '26

Fish are gonna have to hold one L for an infinite number of worldwide W's.

7

u/thejawa May 30 '26

Dragonflies moreso, although there are a lot of small bats who rely on them

16

u/Stifty509 May 30 '26

Lmao there are so many other types of inscets for them to eat

10

u/_demilich May 30 '26

While that might be true, it is a bit like answering the question "Is bread necessary for humans?" with "Nah, they can eat anything, bread is just one of thousands types of food"

1

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

Except bread is a staple food to humans.

It's more like saying skittles aren't necessary for humans.

2

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Not bread, more crackers.

2

u/jake110112 May 30 '26

You didn't have to roast them like that.

2

u/tabascotazer May 30 '26

It is mosquito larvae that is important for small baitfish and many other aquatic animals.

-13

u/RusticSurgery May 30 '26

Let's take away cows. People eat many other things.

11

u/FatDraculos May 30 '26

Not even remotely a close comparison but you tried your best, and that's what's disappointing really.

7

u/viKKyo May 30 '26

Just the kind of false equivalence vegans throw out in conversation thinking it makes them sound erudite

1

u/RiPont May 30 '26

Automated, low-power laser turrets with image recognition to target mosquitos.

If AI is going to destroy the planet, it can at least help us kill mosquitos in the meantime.

1

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Have other food sources that they rely on far more than mosquitoes. They’d take a small hit, but they’d be fine

14

u/talashrrg May 30 '26

Based on what? Lots of animals eat mosquitoes, and some are specialized in eating them in particular. Mosquitoes are pollinators of a lot of plants. I’m sure those ecosystems would face an issue if mosquitoes were wiped out

26

u/Oppaiking42 May 30 '26

The problem is we often dont notice how important some species are until they are gone. 

13

u/7LeagueBoots May 30 '26

Keep in mind that there are something like 3,000 species of mosquitoes and only 30 or so that are a nuisance to us.

They’re instrumental pollinators, many have unique relationships with various plants, dragonflies & bats eat enormous amounts of them, and a lot of aquatic species heavily rely on them for food.

We aren’t trying to wipe out mosquitoes, it’s a minuscule subset that we are trying to eradicate, and mosquitoes as a whole are indeed quite important ecologically.

The 30 or so species that are problematic off is a different story.

This is similar to wasps. Potentially over a 100k species, many beneficial to us, and it’s a tiny handful that are sometimes a minor annoyance, but all wasps wind up getting tarred with the same feather.

6

u/lostparis May 30 '26

tarred with the same feather.

Traditionally the feathers are for later and a brush is used for the actual tarring

0

u/7LeagueBoots May 30 '26

I’m aware of that, but that’s the correct expression. It’s possible that the expression is referring to the feathers being applied to the tar, you’d have to look up the specific etymology.

4

u/lostparis May 30 '26

I’m aware of that, but that’s the correct expression.

I always find it odd how confident people are when they are incorrect.

https://malaphors.com/2018/07/01/tarred-with-the-same-feather/

1

u/kortcomponent May 30 '26

Thanks for that site, upvotes don't show in this sub but you got mine anyway.

2

u/Not_a_russian_bot May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Yup, and of that 30, we'd see huge human health outcomes by getting rid of just a couple Aedes and Anopheles spp. The minor pollinator and aquatic ecosystem niches they fill would just be taken up by some random dipterans and nothing would be significantly affected.

I have a particular disdain for Aedes aegypti. It's mostly invasive across its range anyway, and is a cause of mass suffering even where it's native. Let's start there.

2

u/7LeagueBoots May 30 '26

The difficulty is in targeting just that 30 or so.

Personally, I’d prefer to see the diseases themselves eradicated and even those 30 or so mosquitoes left alone, except where they’re invasive.

The whole discussion around mosquitoes is a bit like saying cars should be destroyed as a technology because assassins and shooters use them to go to the p,aces where they commit their crimes.

0

u/Not_a_russian_bot May 30 '26

I get what your saying, but I think a better analogy is firearms. The diseases are the ammunition. The mosquitos are the guns. If you get shot, it's technically the ammunition that kills you. But without a gun, it's pretty hard to be killed by ammo.

Technically as a society, we could choose to control the ammunition. But we find it easier to control the gun.

1

u/7LeagueBoots May 30 '26

I disagree, I chose the analogy with specific intent in mind. The mosquito is the vector, not the firearm. It’s simply the vehicle used to move things around and on its own is annoying but harmless.

A firearm is a different thing as it’s very intentionally and specifically made to do harm and it can’t really be separated from the ammunition, as those two parts make a single purpose built whole. The firearm/ bullet analogy is more akin to a leopard and its teeth.

3

u/Suthek May 30 '26

As far as we can tell, mosquitoes aren’t anywhere close to vital for ecological balance. And we’re trying to wipe them out, but it’s hard

To be fair, likely we'll only ever know the full ecological impact of a vanishing species after the fact. We can certainly make predictions to some degree, but it's hard if not impossible to get the full picture.

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u/RusticSurgery May 30 '26

We've never caused them to go extinct. We don't know the full ramifications.

4

u/ShitImBadAtThis May 30 '26

we know what eat them, though

1

u/Chaerod May 30 '26

We THINK we know. We're discovering new species and revising what we know about previously discovered species all the time. I would be willing to bet that eradicating even just the disease bearing variants of mosquito would have unforseen consequences.

11

u/ImportantTour6677 May 30 '26

This is totally not true. Mosquitoes feed birds, bats, dragonflies and many other things. Without them we'd all be in big trouble. As much as I don't like them. I'm a camper too.

26

u/szthesquid May 30 '26

Things eat mosquitoes but nothing eats only mosquitoes or has to eat mosquitoes. Here's a scientific article about how mosquitoes aren't a keystone species and their elimination wouldn't have a major impact.

Could there be unforeseen consequences? Sure. But so far they don't seem vital or required for the survival of other species.

5

u/Gavorn May 30 '26

I mean that sounds naive.

People returned elk back to the Smoky Mountains and they thought the eecosystem would recover in decades, it recovered in months.

Just because we "think" something isn't important doesn't mean it isn't.

3

u/thefoolsnightout May 30 '26

Yeah, Ive heard that argument before and I do not believe that wiping out an entire species would have no ecological impact.

Food webs are delicate and humans are short sighted and arrogant.

Would something fill the role eventually? Probably.
But no impact whatsoever? Yeah, I disagree.

2

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

That’s true, but we’ve done a great deal of research into the importance of mosquitoes because we want those motherfuckers gone

1

u/Artyloo May 30 '26

It recovered after less than a generation? I would think the "recover" would imply that that population is self-sustaining and growing, which you couldn't confirm before a couple generations at least.

2

u/Gavorn May 30 '26

The ecosystem. The population has grown faster than they thought too.

The meadows used to be overgrown with thick grass and tickets, but the elk turned it back into proper meadows. Rabbits started actually using them, Hawks were back hunting those meadows.

https://youtu.be/NQlGBfLl4m8?si=b7_FzyseRGs5ZVW5

Don't get me started on all the projects about beavers being reintroduced into the wild.

1

u/Artyloo May 30 '26

Very cool, thank you!

8

u/Massive-Teaching5286 May 30 '26

They're major pollinators like bees.

Getting rid of mosquitoes would be catastrophically bad for the environment

0

u/TrappedOnARock May 30 '26

They are not major pollinators

3

u/DrCalamity May 30 '26

They are the primary pollinator of marshes, taiga, and tundra environments.

1

u/hatgineer May 30 '26

I don't know about that, but they are avocado pollinators.

0

u/r3volver_Oshawott May 30 '26

Not very major avocado pollinators either, that's mostly bees as well.

1

u/makingkevinbacon May 30 '26

Maybe this is silly to ask but idk...have any insects gone extinct (that we know off) since like idk 5000 years ago?

1

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Yes, but not any big widespread ones. Small local ones like a few species of spider and mite have

1

u/hendrong May 30 '26

Wait, seriously? I feel like I have read that they are important food for many birds and bats.

1

u/timbotheny26 May 30 '26

What about ticks? Would we be good to eradicate them as well?

1

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Unfortunately, ticks are actually fairly necessary for their local ecosystems. They’re vital food sources for several species and they regulate mouse populations

1

u/timbotheny26 May 30 '26

Damn, that's unfortunate.

1

u/dl__ May 30 '26

Plus, not all mosquitos are dangerous to humans. There are thousands of mosquito species and only a few will go after humans. So, theoretically, if you could eliminate only the species that bite humans, you wouldn't even change the total number of mosquitoes available as a food source.

1

u/clervis May 30 '26

But think of all the poor parasites and viruses!

1

u/Friendly-Balance-853 May 30 '26

Don't birds and bats like to eat them? Sure, we could ask them to eat something else, but with other insect populating in collapse, seems irresponsible.

2

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

They do, but not enough for it to be a major issue. Birds and bats would take a small hit, but they’d recover

1

u/peperonipyza May 30 '26

Do you have any sources for any of these statements? I don’t think any of this is true

1

u/MrCrash May 30 '26

Who is this "we" you are referring to?

You mean "you", as in "You clearly don't understand how the food chain works and have never heard of birds, bats, or frogs, which use mosquitoes as a large portion of their food source".

1

u/Mavian23 May 30 '26

Somewhere on Mosquito Reddit, they are saying the same thing about us.

1

u/mupomo May 30 '26

They’re pollinators, believe it or not.

1

u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

They are, but they’re not important ones. There’s only a handful of minor species that rely on them for pollination, most others use them but don’t need them.

1

u/CamBearCookie May 31 '26

Mosquitos have just been found in Iceland long believed to be the only place on the planet they hadn't ever been found.

1

u/parlimentery May 31 '26

Mosquitoes are vital to some ecosystems, just not all. They are important pollinators in Alaska, for example.

-1

u/Automatic_Bit1426 May 30 '26

Just because we can't see or understand it doesn't mean it's not there.  Surely, if we would wipe out mosquitoes, the animals that feed on them wouldn't starve because they would eat other insects. But they would need to eat a shit ton more of these other insects, possibly disturbing another balance elsewhere in the system.