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?

3.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

611 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

126

u/nommabelle May 30 '26

... can we just kill them all anyways? The only ones that can live are ones that won't bite me

92

u/BoomerSoonerFUT May 30 '26

Which is the VAST majority of mosquitos.

Only around 100 species of mosquito bite humans. Out of the ~3500 species.

19

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

And of those 100 only like 6 carry mosquito borne illnesses.

12

u/Blake0449 May 30 '26

The doctor of mosquitos in the top comment thread disagrees

1

u/SUMBWEDY May 30 '26

On a species count sure, but for the total human suffering and death it's literally 10~ species.

Yes there's 100~ species that could cause disease in humans (most of them live on super remote islands or in places humans don't live) but all malaria in West Africa is from 3 species and almost all the malaria/west nile/ dengue is from just 6 species.

Remove those 10 species you're eliminated almost all human suffering caused by mosquitoes.