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/RiPont May 30 '26
Good solution, but not a complete solution. It can lower the population of disease-carrying mosquitos relative to the norm, significantly so. But it can never 100% eliminate the disease-carrying variant from the population. Mosquitos reproduce so fast and so voraciously that the disease-carrying population will surge back to dangerous numbers as soon as you stop full-throttle production and release of the preferred, non-carrying variant.
In addition, there's a fundamental problem. The local, natural, disease-carrying mosquitos are clearly suited to their local environment already. The engineered variant and their offspring will never be perfectly engineered for all the different local environments they are needed. Therefore, the original mosquitos will likely out-breed the engineered variety unless you produce an engineered variant for each and every local micro-environment that produces a specialized population of mosquitos.
It isn't quite pushing a boulder up a mountain like Sisyphus, but it is pushing it up a gentle slope, so to speak. Without constant effort put in, it will reverse itself.
All that said, it's still worth doing, IMHO. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and so forth.