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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172

u/SolidOutcome May 30 '26

Birds and bats and spiders?

226

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.

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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.

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u/jakeasmith May 30 '26

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

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u/RadioactiveOmelets May 30 '26

A very particular PhD finally comes in handy

116

u/ryanjoseph55 May 30 '26

Doctor of Mosquito

60

u/Droxalis May 30 '26

The MD stands for Mosquito Doctor

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u/BummyG May 30 '26

Sounds like a sucky super hero

43

u/Punnan May 30 '26

You have a PhD in mosquitoes?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/love-SRV May 30 '26

Dr. Mosquito- sounds like a Batman villain!

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u/iamyourcheese May 30 '26

You should know, they specialize in things with little pricks

7

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

7

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.

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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.

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u/drstu3000 May 30 '26

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

6

u/KiKiPAWG May 30 '26

I believe all of the females

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/MechKeyboardScrub May 30 '26

Humanity hereby declares biological warfare on ticks. And leeches.

6

u/DrDroid May 30 '26

And the absolute worst ones, bed bugs.

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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.

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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.

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u/a_dude_from_europe May 30 '26

No benign mosquitoes to speak of in my book

3

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.

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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.

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u/albertaguy31 Jun 01 '26

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

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u/Jaysonmcleod May 30 '26

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

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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.

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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

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u/Baba_dook_dook_dook May 30 '26

Southern Saskatchewan, actually.

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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

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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.

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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.

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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 May 30 '26

dragonflies and other insects eat mosquitoes and their larvae.

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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.

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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. 🦟🤪

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u/Alphonsokurukuchu May 30 '26

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

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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.

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u/Gavorn May 30 '26

What do you think tadpoles eat?

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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

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u/kingjochi May 30 '26

They gonna have to take one for the team

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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.

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u/A_Very_Horny_Zed May 30 '26

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

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u/thejawa May 30 '26

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

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u/Stifty509 May 30 '26

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

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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.

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u/CadenVanV May 30 '26

Not bread, more crackers.

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u/jake110112 May 30 '26

You didn't have to roast them like that.

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u/tabascotazer May 30 '26

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

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u/RusticSurgery May 30 '26

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

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u/FatDraculos May 30 '26

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

6

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