5 ms·

Afaik mosquitoes don’t really contribute ecologically. They are just nuisance.

galangalalgol 6y ago
Malaria has killed so many people I don't really care if wiping them out starts a trophic cascade, it would probably still kill fewer people than malaria. If we had to give up condors and bees, I'd still think it a fair trade.
- georgeam 6y ago
  With the bees will go lots of foods that depend on them for pollination. Bees are very essential for agriculture.
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    Actually very few of our foods, and none of our staple crops rely significantly on insects for pollination. Grapes for instance, can use insects but don't have significant problems in their absence.
  - bijant 6y ago
    Bees are just another legacy producer ripe for disruption. With recent Progress in AI and Drone technology the question isn’t if Bees get replaced by autonomous Nanobots but when.
    - galangalalgol 6y ago
      I remember when I was a kid the EMP trucks went around to keep the nano swarms down, but most of us got bot-lung anyway. Even rogue nanoswarms are less worrisome than mosquitos as a vector.
xvilka 6y ago
They are the food for birds. Not sure how big that chunk is. Also mosquito's larvae is a water predator, might be an important ecological niche in water reservoirs.
WalterBright 6y ago
I recall a town in Texas decided to wipe out the local bat population due to fear of rabies. The next year they had a major scourge of mosquitoes. Turns out bats mostly eat mosquitoes. They let the bats resettle the area. Bats eat tons of mosquitoes. Some outfits encourage and help people set up bat friendly enclosures to deal with local mosquito problems.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Well bats certainly haven’t caused us any major global health problems recently...
  - girvo 6y ago
    Sure, and they’re a large viral reservoir, but I’d hope we don’t think that’s a good reason to eradicate them. They don’t typically come into our homes the way mosquitos do; we go to theirs.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    While the bat origin of Covid 19 is plausible, it hasn't been conclusively demonstrated. The gain of function lab leak is just as plausible, and equally unproven -- due to the Chinese dictatorship's suspicious lack of transparency and cooperation.
    - eloff 6y ago
      Lab escape is still bat origin, just potentially with a human assist (or human mistake with an unaltered virus.)
- yyyk 6y ago
  There's IIRC a single-digit number of mosquito species carrying malaria and a slightly higher number of mosquito species targeting humans - as compared to hundreds of species of mosquito. Kill the carriers off and they just get replaced by some other specie of mosquito. Lets face it, if the same Malaria mortality rate happened in the West, we wouldn't (and historically didn't) wait for vaccines - we'd pave over an entire ecosystem if we had to. We'd do the same even if we had the same death rate as the group that got vaccinated.

Malaria has killed so many people I don't really care if wiping them out starts a trophic cascade, it would probably still kill fewer people than malaria. If we had to give up condors and bees, I'd still think it a fair trade.

georgeam 6y ago
With the bees will go lots of foods that depend on them for pollination. Bees are very essential for agriculture.
- galangalalgol 6y ago
  Actually very few of our foods, and none of our staple crops rely significantly on insects for pollination. Grapes for instance, can use insects but don't have significant problems in their absence.
- bijant 6y ago
  Bees are just another legacy producer ripe for disruption. With recent Progress in AI and Drone technology the question isn’t if Bees get replaced by autonomous Nanobots but when.
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    I remember when I was a kid the EMP trucks went around to keep the nano swarms down, but most of us got bot-lung anyway. Even rogue nanoswarms are less worrisome than mosquitos as a vector.

xvilka 6y ago

They are the food for birds. Not sure how big that chunk is. Also mosquito's larvae is a water predator, might be an important ecological niche in water reservoirs.

WalterBright 6y ago

I recall a town in Texas decided to wipe out the local bat population due to fear of rabies. The next year they had a major scourge of mosquitoes. Turns out bats mostly eat mosquitoes. They let the bats resettle the area. Bats eat tons of mosquitoes. Some outfits encourage and help people set up bat friendly enclosures to deal with local mosquito problems.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anonuser123456 6y ago
Well bats certainly haven’t caused us any major global health problems recently...
- girvo 6y ago
  Sure, and they’re a large viral reservoir, but I’d hope we don’t think that’s a good reason to eradicate them. They don’t typically come into our homes the way mosquitos do; we go to theirs.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  While the bat origin of Covid 19 is plausible, it hasn't been conclusively demonstrated. The gain of function lab leak is just as plausible, and equally unproven -- due to the Chinese dictatorship's suspicious lack of transparency and cooperation.
  - eloff 6y ago
    Lab escape is still bat origin, just potentially with a human assist (or human mistake with an unaltered virus.)
yyyk 6y ago
There's IIRC a single-digit number of mosquito species carrying malaria and a slightly higher number of mosquito species targeting humans - as compared to hundreds of species of mosquito. Kill the carriers off and they just get replaced by some other specie of mosquito. Lets face it, if the same Malaria mortality rate happened in the West, we wouldn't (and historically didn't) wait for vaccines - we'd pave over an entire ecosystem if we had to. We'd do the same even if we had the same death rate as the group that got vaccinated.