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Ticks are sometimes more annoying and way less ecological useful. (without mosquitos for example there would be way less birds, bats, ...)
by lukan 1y ago
Ticks are sometimes more annoying and way less ecological useful. (without mosquitos for example there would be way less birds, bats, ...)
- jvanderbot 1y agoLots and lots of delicious ground-dwelling birds eat ticks (Turkey, Chicken, Quail), but they'd figure something else out.
- lukan 1y agoBut not as their main source of food as far as I know. Bugs, worms and spiders are way bigger and more common.
- acdha 1y agoI’ve seen researchers suggesting that mosquitoes aren’t a big enough part of anything’s diet to be missed: https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a
- cultofmetatron 1y agothere's a large amount of endangered and critically important species for which the strongest reason the general public accepts for why we should accommodate them is "they eat X in mosquitos every night"
- charliebwrites 1y agoWhat are those species?
- kulahan 1y agoProbably tons of bats and small nocturnal mammals.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThe serious proposals to eliminate mosquitoes only propose to eliminate the mosquito species that carry nasty human diseases. If those species were eliminated other mosquito species would quickly expand to replace the eliminated species. So that's good for the birds, and bad for the humans that want to get rid of all the pesky annoying mosquitoes, not just get rid of mosquito born disease.
- henearkr 1y agoAlthough you can just make the disease carriers immune to the disease. In that case, not even need to exterminate any species. That's typically done by introducing some Wolbachia in their gut.
- guelo 1y agoYes, all the ectoparasites, look it up. We've eliminated most endoparasites that used to live inside us. If we figure out how to, we should eliminate the ectos, including mosquitos.