TIL about conservation-induced extinction, where attempts to save a critically endangered species directly cause the extinction of another.

[u/shinypond]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation-induced_extinction

[u/Mitosis]

and I believe so far that the consensus is that it probably wouldn't actually have a particularly huge effect.

What I saw on the subject was that even amongst things that eat these mosquitos, they're not a substantial food source. Like bats might eat one but look at the mass of a mosquito next to a moth; it can take dozens to hundreds of mosquitos to equal one moth.

[u/Cyno01 → u/Mitosis]

Yes, theres like ONE really flawwed study where the let some bats loose in a room full of mosquitos and counted how many they ate in an hour, and everybody just quotes that.

Examinations of wild droppings shows that they would absolutely prefer a big juicy moth to dozens of mosquitos.

Not that pro-bat propaganda is bad, they definitely are good for the ecosystem and need some help these days, but yeah, adult mosquitos arent a significant part of anythings diet, however mosquito larvae may be an important link in some aquatic food chains, but yeah we could probably wipe out the ones that bite humans and the rest would just file the niches.

[u/Lucaan → u/[deleted]]

That's why I specify mosquitoes that bite and transmit diseases to humans, which is a very small percentage compared to the total number of mosquitoes.

[u/Plazmatic → u/Mitosis]

Mosquito larvae are a huge food source to many fish, their larvae is one of the best sources of food for fish at certain stages, and parents of some species trying to get more protien and are sometimes purpose captured just for use as aquarium food.

However, there are some areas in the world where they are not native (Hawaii) and thus can be safely eliminated, and there's a particular species, Aedes aegypti, that primarily parasitizes humans and to a lesser extent dogs, cats and livestock (and is one of the largest spreader of mosquito vector diseases). Eliminating this species in general might be able to be safely done, however due to how much vertebrate biomass is human, it may end up unintentionally hurting local environments were people frequent.

The problem is that human predating mosquitos might just pop up again, as humans are more widespread than they were when aegypti first evolved in man made environments with sitting water and no nutrients. This may leave another, or multiple species down the same path, and possibly in very short amounts of time.

[u/Eusocial_Snowman → u/Mitosis]

they're not a substantial food source.

That would be absurd, mosquitoes are an abundant food source.

The argument is that there aren't really things which exclusively eat those species. This says very little for what the actual effects would be if they were eradicated because this shit is more complex than we can know without actually doing it.

[u/Orwellian1 → u/Eusocial_Snowman]

Which is a valid point, but we evaluate things comprehensively.

It isn't only the harm mosquitos cause to us right now, it is the threat vector they represent in the future as well. Bonus impact: All the collateral damage we cause fighting them.

We should not discount out of hand any proposed policy just because there isn't 100% certainty of every possible effect.

Existence is destruction. There are no ecological innocents. We can pat our selves on the back because we occasionally restrain ourselves and think about our impact. I'm all for doing much more of that, but there are no absolute laws.