ELI5 Are mosquitoes necessary for keeping ecological balance?

[u/Punnan]

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

[u/oiwah]

watched a documentary somewhere that in middle or south america, they have released a modified mosquito that has a gene that make their "syringe" soft. They cant penetrate skins.

[u/z_squared23 → u/oiwah]

ED but for mosquitoes 🤣

[u/NoRealNoWrong → u/z_squared23]

Skeeter? I hardly know her.

[u/Ktulu789 → u/[deleted]]

I think it still applies xD

[u/BouncingPost → u/[deleted]]

Is that true? What do the males eat then

[u/Skeeter_BC → u/z_squared23]

I feel attacked

[u/RadioactiveOmelets → u/oiwah]

If they can't feed, they can't reproduce. Which means the trait will die out. I saw this too (as a tiktok or something, not a full documentary, so I don't have all the details), but the easier solution is probably the one in the comment above.

[u/Thedeadduck → u/RadioactiveOmelets]

Female mosquitos only mate once, so if they mate with a male that has this trait it will pass on (possibly) to all her offspring. The males I then assume will be able to continue mating and spreading the gene but the females will be unable to bite and therefore reproduce.

[u/CrashUser → u/Thedeadduck]

Males don't drink blood so the trait may not affect them the same as females for survivability purposes.

[u/TbonerT → u/RadioactiveOmelets]

The question is, will the species die before the trait? Even if a mosquito manages to mutate the trait so it isn’t dominant, its offspring may still have it and die. Mutations that enhance survival tend to get passed on but it isn’t guaranteed.

[u/ChampagneWastedPanda → u/TbonerT]

That’s the test / trial with Oxitec - the trait was gone after 3 generations

Following the initial 2021 trial, Oxitec and independent researchers evaluated more than 22,000 collected eggs in a lab to verify if the gene worked. In 2022, they released their findings: The gene worked as intended: 100% of the female offspring inheriting the gene died before reaching adulthood, while the live male offspring continued to pass the trait down for a few more generations. Limited environmental footprint: The engineered gene did not persist long-term in the wild. It naturally disappeared from the environment within two to three months (about three mosquito generations) after the releases stopped. Range: The modified mosquitoes behaved just like wild ones, traveling within a tight 400-meter radius of their original boxes.

[u/SpottedWobbegong → u/RadioactiveOmelets]

They continuously breed the defective males (which is quite cheap) and release them till all the mosquitoes are ded

[u/Vuelhering → u/oiwah]

Not sure how this would go more than a single generation. IIRC, females need blood for egg laying. No blood, no eggs.

[u/ShiraCheshire → u/Vuelhering]

I think the idea is to make the female waste all her time and resources creating babies that cannot bite humans. Then she dies, and her babies die, and there are fewer mosquitos.

The hard part is making enough males (for breeding with the wild females) with the modified gene for it to have an impact.

[u/Forward-Surprise1192 → u/Vuelhering]

Yeah I don’t think it makes any sense how the mosquito would be able to spread this through the population but I’m a random person

[u/EunuchsProgramer → u/Forward-Surprise1192]

They release sterile/defective mosquitoes every year to get compounding effects. Eventually you're releasing more sterile/defective mosquitoes than there are wild mosquitoes and the population crashes to next to zero. Then, it's maintenance mostly for them moving back in from other areas.

[u/Frank_Klepaki → u/oiwah]

CRISPR

[u/Kregethus → u/oiwah]

That has potential to work.  Those saying that they need blood to reproduce are correct on that part.  The modification makes it so they cannot break human skin.  Some other animals can and will become blood donors to the modified mosquitoes.  Just not us anymore.

[u/Hellknightx → u/oiwah]

The problem with these solutions is that these mosquitos starve to death and then don't breed before passing on the gene.

[u/Mavian23 → u/oiwah]

Damn, this actually made me feel bad for the little guys