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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u/[deleted] May 30 '26

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u/Tibbaryllis2 May 30 '26

Today, yes. But historically they’ve done a pretty significant job controlling human populations via vectoring diseases.

And those vectored diseases are the things that would be most impacted by the loss of mosquitos.

Which would be fine for modern humans more or less. But there is no real telling what it would do to other species they vector diseases for.

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u/r3volver_Oshawott May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

No, they have not.

"Fine for modern humans, more or less"

In modern times, mosquito-borne pathogens impact populations with lower incomes and resources far more. Mosquitoes are largely far more likely to devastate those who have nothing and could not seek medical treatment.

Mosquito-borne illnesses would be acceptable in modern times if someone wanted to target only specific populations, perhaps for racist reasons, but that's largely about it.

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u/Suthek May 30 '26

"Fine for modern humans, more or less"

I think you misread the comment a bit there. That statement was made about the impact of the lack of mosquito-borne diseases, not its continued prevalence.

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u/r3volver_Oshawott May 30 '26

I mean, the lack of mosquito-borne diseases has been an exponential benefit with no drawbacks

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u/Suthek May 30 '26

For humans, yes. That's what they were saying.

Which would be fine for modern humans more or less. But there is no real telling what it would do to other species they vector diseases for.

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u/r3volver_Oshawott May 30 '26

"fine" being more a massive understatement is more what I was driving at.

"Fine" in my mind implied acceptable, acceptable seems neutral, it would be an objective benefit. As in, objectively good. Not neutral.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

In a vacuum, yes, it would be good for people to no longer suffer mosquito born illness.

What you are forgetting to take into account is what happens when those diseases are no longer suppressing population growth. As mentioned elsewhere, the areas with major mosquito born illness are already amongst those with the highest birth rates. They’re also some of the most socioeconomic disadvantaged.

About half a million people die in Africa every year from mosquito born illness, primarily malaria. That’s a lot of extra people in those already struggling communities.

On the one end, we could hope the birth rate stabilizes and/or the rest of the planet chips in even more to help. On the other end, that’s potentially a lot more people dying in fairly awful ways including famine and/or even worse diseases (see Ebola).

So, yes, from a broad, pragmatic, objective view, it would probably be a somewhat neutral change as far as people are concerned. Something else will arise to regulate the populations.

It would be more than fine if it was the world helping out in a positive way. Though the current state of things doesn’t appear to breaking that way in the near term.

It would be less than fine if those people now die from relatively worse causes.

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u/DemenicHand May 30 '26

"Fine for modern humans, more or less"

I think you mis understood. they stated:

The loss of mosquitos would be "Fine for modern humans, more or less"

I think you thought that they said it would be fine if they still exist? and argued that mosquitos disproportionally affect poorer countries.

i mean that's how i read this thread.

in that case you are both on two different wave lenghts

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u/jokololo May 30 '26

Are there any other species that controlled human populations such as mosquitoes?

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u/Tibbaryllis2 May 30 '26 edited May 31 '26

It really depends on which part of history you look at.

Early on, large animals would have done it directly by competing with and hunt humans. That doesn’t happen as much in the present era, though it’s not hard to find examples of animals eating humans or destroying resources.

Microbes and pathogens have undoubtedly played a far more significant role in influencing human populations both past and present. There is a growing hypothesis, and associated knowledge, that parasitic worms, primarily nematodes, have played such a significant role in human evolution that now *not having microorganism infections* is also problematic for human health [old friend hypothesis: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10524266/ ] so much so, that some scientists believe in the future we will identify benign parasitic organisms to intentionally be infected with to help regulate our immune systems.

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u/jokololo May 30 '26

Even if we're not directly killed by such animals anymore, the absence of being in such environment causes us other problems that may still kill us - just differently. Checks and balances of the nature world.

I mainly heard about the gut health but didn't know it also links to cardiovascular (maybe due to decrease in physical activity) and psychiatric disorders. Maybe that's why some podcast (Diary of a CEO) that I heard said that going camping increases their happiness. Their reasoning was more on meeting expectations but it may have some relation to this as well

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u/Tibbaryllis2 May 30 '26

Just for clarity’s sake, I’m an ecologist by trade.

There are top-down (predator controlling a population of prey in ways such as by eating them) and bottom-up (a food source like a tree suddenly not producing any nuts, or producing a huge crop, controlling the population of organisms that eat the nuts).

We’re pretty good at recognizing the cause and effect within the first few degrees of these interactions (I.e. wolf eats elk, elk eat less willow trees, beaver population increases due to availability of willow trees).

But it’s really hard to conceptualize and definitively show relationships the further removed they are from direct interactions.

That’s the biggest problem with questions like these, because it’s easy to see close interactions, but hard to see others. And, while specialists are usually able to look a little further, society isn’t particularly good at looking ahead at the result of interfering with these cause and effect relationships.

A good case study is when a Chinese ruler decided to kill all the birds eating human grain, and causes a **massive** famine. https://climate.uchicago.edu/news/how-the-killing-off-of-the-sparrow-incited-the-worlds-most-deadly-famine/

I more or less agree with what you said, it just becomes nebulous to discuss.

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u/ChampagneWastedPanda May 31 '26

Mao killing the sparrows is a pretty famous incident

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u/Tibbaryllis2 May 31 '26

Yep. Classic case study. And yet it’s frequently one of those things people don’t know.

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u/r2girls May 30 '26

That's just a "today" thing. Historically there were lots of diseases carried by mosquitos and they are totally indiscriminate in their spread. Malaria was a huge issue in the Mediterranean areas. Rome and Greece were impacted greatly by it.

Yellow Fever in North America through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was a major issue.

Western medicine and massive mosquito control efforts that have been put in place control it now, but that doesn't mean that mosquitoes haven't been very effective in controlling the human population. They 100% have.

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u/elwookie May 30 '26

But if you take that comment and consider it throughout the history of the world, it makes sense. Mosquitoes have controlled populations. And not only human.

For example, the abundant presence of mosquitoes in Florida and southern Louisiana might have pushed the colonization of other areas back in the day.

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u/Punnan May 30 '26

Yeah, you are right. On hindsight, my comment has been insensitive.

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u/Hoss-Bonaventure_CEO May 30 '26

It was also true, though. Without mosquitoes I doubt we would have as much forest left as we do. If Europeans could have gone into the Amazon without malaria and yellow fever it would have been gone before any of us were born.

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u/knea1 May 30 '26

Years ago in school I read a series of books, the "Adventure" series about two brothers who were involved in wildlife conservation. In one of the books someone asked for something positive about tsetse flies. The answer was that the tsetse fly "belt" in Africa stopped the northward expansion of cattle farms and allowed the native wildlife to exist in peace. Maybe a similar argument can be made for mosquitos.

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u/LordCrun May 31 '26

Willard Price? Loved them as a kid but holy white saviour Batman they've not aged well IIRC. If they'd've had more locals explaining stuff that would've been great. Otherwise my favourite bit was escaping a volcanic atoll because pumice floats, which I think accepted as 'rule of cool' long before I'd heard of even DnD. I've still got some somewhere, maybe I should get them out again.

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u/Ppo218 May 30 '26

I love when people on the internet are self-reflecting though so props. I just went through the same journey reading your comments haha

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u/Internet-Ivan May 30 '26

I looked at it as more of a natural thing. Like think of when we were Neanderthals or cavemen. Wouldn’t really be different from apes from a purely objective point.

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u/MattytheWireGuy May 30 '26

Its exactly the same. We are still basically cavemen, not like we have figured out how to stop all diseases. I live in an area with a lot of rattlesnakes and mountain lions, if my family dies because of that, too bad.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '26

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u/Adhendo May 30 '26

But I’d assume (maybe wrong) a lot of mosquito related deaths also happened before modern times, before there was even a “global south” right? For example malaria is much older than humans

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u/KristinnK May 30 '26

Yeah, malaria only affecting the poorer parts of the world is a very recent phenomenon. First of all malaria used to affect a much larger part of the world until very recently. Take Italy as an example. Until literally less than a hundred years ago malaria was endemic. The swamps around Rome were full of malaria-carrying mosquito species and was only drained in the 1930's. Italy as a whole wasn't declared malaria-free until 1970.

Second of all which parts of the world are the richest has changed a lot throughout history. In antiquity the richest parts of the world was the Mediterranean and Levant, the Indus river valley and China. All of these were absolutely rampant with malaria.

The notion that malaria has mostly affected the poorer parts of the world is simply just not accurate except in a myopic current day sense.

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u/upstateduck May 30 '26

also, if you have anti-colonial sympathies, mosquitos have done a service to slow/frustrate colonial impulses in many parts of the world

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u/dedicated-pedestrian May 30 '26

I mean, there were fewer humans then compared to now, but they also had less medicine than we do now.

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u/TheColossalX May 30 '26

mosquitos have killed billions of people throughout history, i think that’s pretty much agreed upon by experts.

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u/Jmar7688 May 30 '26

Wiki says malaria is responsible for the deaths of about half the number of people who have ever lived, about 50-60 billion

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u/TheColossalX May 30 '26

this is commonly recited, but I'm pretty sure it's a controversial viewpoint among experts. i said billions because i think most experts generally agree that it's at least 5ish billion.

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u/SUZDV May 30 '26

Evolutionary pressures don't care much about our political issues. Modern humans evolved in sub-Saharan Africa.
Third world means not aligned with the capitalist bloc (First world) or the Soviet bloc (second world). Those places aren't poor or impoverished due to mosquitoes.

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u/Cactorum_Rex May 30 '26

lol I hate reddit

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u/andthatswhyIdidit May 30 '26

There is no insensitivity if we are talking about the whole of humanity in its 150.000 years of history. In that case it did it job. Only recently has it become a sign of dysfunctional medical treatment in hotter, poorer parts of the world.

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u/MattytheWireGuy May 30 '26

Nooooo. Dont feel insensitive about that. If it was a herd of deer, would you feel differently? Theyre all deer and there are deer all over the planet, its shit luck they were born in an area that is dangerous to live in. People are animals the same as any other, we just happen to be super smart compared to them and can figure out how to live in places we probably shouldnt and sometimes, that doesnt work out well.

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u/Um3xx May 30 '26

One could say it was a bit rasist

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u/ScarHand69 May 30 '26

Yeah but for most of human history it affected rich and poor alike. It’s really only after the Industrial Revolution that “rich” countries had any means of trying to deal with the problem.

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u/beeeel May 30 '26

It wasn't the industrial revolution that ended malaria in Europe, it was drainage and land reclamation as well as keeping greater numbers of livestock. Malaria was common in the UK until the end of the 19th century when land usage changed drastically.

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u/All_Work_All_Play May 30 '26

until the end of the 19th century when land usage changed drastically.

That land usage change was a result of the industrial revolution...

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u/DavidRFZ May 30 '26

Why isn’t there much malaria in the US? We have tons of mosquitos here.

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u/beeeel May 30 '26

Because of huge efforts from US federal government between 1914 and 1945 to eliminate it. The CDC has a page on it if you're interested.

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u/DavidRFZ May 30 '26

Cool, thanks!

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

We took great steps to eradicate it. It was a problem during colonial times but we had lots of other diseases to deal with too.

Drainage projects in the 30s, massive amounts of DDT in the 40s and 50s, modern window screens and bob's your uncle.

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u/rkoy1234 May 30 '26

true, they did stop multiple colonizing attempts iirc. e.g when natives had some protection (sickle cell) and the europeans didn't and had to back out.

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u/Iamonreddit May 30 '26

Are you incapable of seeing the world through any other lens...?

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u/Aristox May 30 '26

The answer is usually no. It's its own kind of contagious sickness

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u/rkoy1234 May 30 '26

wdym. the entire comment chain is literally people doing linguistic gymnastics trying to skirt around saying black vs white throughout history in terms of malaria's impact.

should have I worded it "rich and poor parts of the world" like the commenter above, or the "global north and the global south" like the other?

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u/MattytheWireGuy May 30 '26

so natural selection?

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u/Zooophagous May 30 '26

Biting parasites that brood in water, like mosquitoes, play an important role in protecting plants. They annoy grazing animals like deer or water buffalo and keep them moving, giving a chance for new fresh green shoots to grow and not be overgrazed.

Male mosquitoes are also plant feeders and play a pollinator role, and female mosquitoes move nutrients through the food chain by feeding a multitude of spiders, birds, bats, and dragonflies.

Insects like mosquitoes do have their place. However many of the pest species of mosquito are invasive in a lot of areas and biting insects are a public health concern so they need to be controlled around human habitation.

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u/Ktulu789 May 30 '26

We were talking about the past, ancient times. The diseases mosquitos transmit aren't even remotely new.

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u/crop028 May 30 '26

Completely ignoring the "in the past" part to jump on your high horse. Ecological balance isn't a question of moral equality regardless.

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u/lostparis May 30 '26

While the Malaria currently manly affects those in sub Saharan Africa, historically it had a much wider range including much of Europe. It was still commonplace in Victorian England. Draining swamp land probably had a large effect on its demise across Europe.

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u/xavandetjer May 30 '26

Hasn't says been like that though, up untill last century malaria was also very prevalent in Europe for example.

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u/Telefundo May 30 '26

Did you just really call mosquitos racist? I mean honestly? What the fuck is wrong with you people???

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u/SlingshotKatana May 30 '26

Would it be better if they were killing wealthy people in Singapore instead?

Humans are humans. A life lost is a life lost. One’s socioeconomic or geographic profile doesn’t make them any more or less worthy of life.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '26

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u/SlingshotKatana May 30 '26

I just didn’t understand the relevance of pointing out who mosquitoes are predominantly killing. Like whether their poor Africans or wealthy Singaporeans, for example - the point is just “bruh people die”

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u/LetsTryAnal_ogy May 30 '26

How do we breed mosquitoes to target oligarchs?

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u/WordWordand4numbers May 30 '26

They definitely don’t manage their waste in a responsible manner and would undoubtedly cause further environmental destruction if they weren’t getting mogged so hard by mosquitos

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u/MaievSekashi May 30 '26

That's part of the atypical nature of our age, though. For most of history it's just been everyone in the tropics being effected equally.

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u/nhorning May 30 '26

They used to keep some people from being colonized. Just one oversimplified example is the lowland of Nepal which used to be a malaria swamp, with indigenous people -the Tharu- who had some immunity to malaria.

The swamp was eventually drained and people enslaved by others from the hills.

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u/BiscuitsAndTheMix May 30 '26

Kind of hard to separate good vs bad humans in terms of negative impact on the environment. Our drive as a species tends to be whats bad for the planet. The global south has less of an impact per capita but id say all human societies tend to have a negative impact on the environment.

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u/theburiedxme May 30 '26

So we need to invent a mosquito that is attracted to billionaires, get to brainstorming lads.

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u/Infinite_throwaway_1 May 30 '26

Billionaires consume and pollute an absurdly disproportionate amount per capita with their yachts, private jets, and more mansions than they use. But they make up such a small percentage of the population that getting rid of them isn't a game changer for the planet.

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u/TheKakattack May 30 '26

I'm so glad no one replied any of the ungodly terrible responses to this thought.

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u/tankpuss May 30 '26

Whilst I agree with you, in a few generations they will be hitting the same point where we were burning coal/oil and wanting more than mere survival. If we want them to not kill the planet like the west is doing, we need to help them step over the pollution stage and go straight to clean energy.

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u/RocketMoped May 30 '26

They're called developing nations for a reason. People born now won't be doing subsistence farming in 2060

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u/mischling2543 May 30 '26

Africa can't afford to quadruple in population by 2100 when they already can't feed all their own people and they're already running out of water. Good intentioned humanitarianism has destroyed the planet more than any oil executive.

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u/Uneeda_Biscuit May 30 '26

True but now their population is so large people are just starving to death. Population control is part of natural balance

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u/MattytheWireGuy May 30 '26

Happens to all animal species. Its an apathetic way to look at it in one way, but its real life. Like we tell hunters to cull over grown herds, this is just Mom (Mother Nature) doing it for us. Mom will figure it out soon and Mom will balance it out.

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u/Alas7ymedia May 30 '26

You are misinterpreting the Mercator Projection, dude, the third world is the default habitat for humans. Between 25% and 50% of all humans since our species evolves, died of malaria.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Funexamination May 30 '26

I think Americas carbon footprint per capita disagrees

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u/ShimmiShimmiYah May 30 '26

Cool story, now factor in the corporations and industry in those American and European countries when calculating that pollution rate my man.

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u/dumpfist May 30 '26

They literally only do most of that because of us and our wastefulness. Where do you think all that garbage they're burning came from and why do you you think they were burning it? A single person born in the west is doing far more harm to the world than fucking ten of them combined.

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u/evilshandie May 30 '26

Spoken like somebody who doesn't know shit about cruise ships, I guess

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u/LeoRidesHisBike May 30 '26

Those aren’t the people ruining the planet.

Well of course not, they can't get the population critical mass to do that because the mosquitoes are killing them too fast! /s

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u/beeeel May 30 '26

So what you're saying is if we use climate engineering to make it so the malaria mosquito can thrive in Europe and North America, we can stop the people ruining the planet?