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Don't get me wrong; I don't hate mosquitoes. I grew up with a wetland in my back yard, and got bitten enough during my wilderness survival merit badge course t

by KMag 6y ago

Don't get me wrong; I don't hate mosquitoes. I grew up with a wetland in my back yard, and got bitten enough during my wilderness survival merit badge course that I no longer swell or itch when I get bitten. However, my understanding is that there are no species that feed exclusively or even mostly on human-biting mosquitoes. I've been told the environmental impact of human-biting mosquitoes going extinct would be minor, though, dramatically reducing human morbidity and mortality in some poorer countries would have indirect environmental impact.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Malaria aside, our bodies are fine-tuned for many factors which all trigger many different mechanisms. It's a very complicated system, grown organically and additively over the course of many hundreds of millions of years. As any software maintainers will tell you, even with a system merely several years in existence, anytime you provide different inputs you have not tried before, e.g. taking mosquitoes out of the equation completely, you increase the chance of different, unexpected, output. This is general theory, but I've come across quite a bit of research suggesting that all the parasites we've been living with for millenia are crucial to priming and functioning of our immune system. I haven't seen anything about mosquitoes specifically yet, but I've seen it for leeches, lice, and worms. Mosquitoes are even more prevalent in our biome, so even more likely to be essential. We did not grow up in a sterile world, all these other beings have been growing up alongside us this whole time.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  > crucial Overstatement.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Your comment reminds me of someone who put olive oil in their car's engine because "it's all oil", and the manual saying it's crucial that it's the right kind of oil is an "overstatement".
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      Nah, I'm the person who sees the owner's manual calls for 5W-30 oil and puts in 5W-30. You're the guy who notes that the new edition of the owner's manual calls for 10W-30 and tries to convince me that if I don't call a tow truck and swap out the oil before I next turn on the car I'm going to ruin it, despite 150,000 miles to the contrary. You're right that there is new information out there, but lived experience puts a pretty modest upper bound on how crucial it can be. I'm not going to yearn for the good old days of ringworms, tapeworms, and god knows what else. I'll wait until either someone figures out how to put the good parts in a vaccine or a replication scandal proves the whole thing to be BS in the first place. Yeah, there's a tiny chance that in the meantime I'll suffer an autoimmune disorder that I otherwise wouldn't have -- but I won't have parasites or the very real consequences that they bring to the table, and in my book, that's not just a small net win, that's a big net win.
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        You turned the analogy around on its head, and it makes no sense. You're the one advocating for the new manual, put out very recently, calling for change of long-established norms.
jfk13 6y ago
> I've been told the environmental impact of human-biting mosquitoes going extinct would be minor I've heard that too. I'm pretty sure we really don't know. Our understanding of entire ecosystems isn't that complete, by a long way.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Also, remember that mosquitoes spend most of their life underwater, feeding the water ecosystem. They only fly for a short while, to get a tiny little bit of blood, mate, lay eggs.

by KMag 6y ago

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Malaria aside, our bodies are fine-tuned for many factors which all trigger many different mechanisms. It's a very complicated system, grown organically and additively over the course of many hundreds of millions of years. As any software maintainers will tell you, even with a system merely several years in existence, anytime you provide different inputs you have not tried before, e.g. taking mosquitoes out of the equation completely, you increase the chance of different, unexpected, output. This is general theory, but I've come across quite a bit of research suggesting that all the parasites we've been living with for millenia are crucial to priming and functioning of our immune system. I haven't seen anything about mosquitoes specifically yet, but I've seen it for leeches, lice, and worms. Mosquitoes are even more prevalent in our biome, so even more likely to be essential. We did not grow up in a sterile world, all these other beings have been growing up alongside us this whole time.

jjoonathan 6y ago
> crucial Overstatement.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Your comment reminds me of someone who put olive oil in their car's engine because "it's all oil", and the manual saying it's crucial that it's the right kind of oil is an "overstatement".
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    Nah, I'm the person who sees the owner's manual calls for 5W-30 oil and puts in 5W-30. You're the guy who notes that the new edition of the owner's manual calls for 10W-30 and tries to convince me that if I don't call a tow truck and swap out the oil before I next turn on the car I'm going to ruin it, despite 150,000 miles to the contrary. You're right that there is new information out there, but lived experience puts a pretty modest upper bound on how crucial it can be. I'm not going to yearn for the good old days of ringworms, tapeworms, and god knows what else. I'll wait until either someone figures out how to put the good parts in a vaccine or a replication scandal proves the whole thing to be BS in the first place. Yeah, there's a tiny chance that in the meantime I'll suffer an autoimmune disorder that I otherwise wouldn't have -- but I won't have parasites or the very real consequences that they bring to the table, and in my book, that's not just a small net win, that's a big net win.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      You turned the analogy around on its head, and it makes no sense. You're the one advocating for the new manual, put out very recently, calling for change of long-established norms.

jfk13 6y ago

> I've been told the environmental impact of human-biting mosquitoes going extinct would be minor I've heard that too. I'm pretty sure we really don't know. Our understanding of entire ecosystems isn't that complete, by a long way.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Also, remember that mosquitoes spend most of their life underwater, feeding the water ecosystem. They only fly for a short while, to get a tiny little bit of blood, mate, lay eggs.