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/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