'We Finally May Be Able to Rid the World of Mosquitoes. But Should We?' (yahoo.com) 153
It's no longer a hypothetical question, writes the Washington Post. "In recent years, scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all."
But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."
It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...
But along with the ability to fight malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other serious diseases, "the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?" When so many wildlife conservationists are trying to save plants and animals from disappearing, the mosquito is one of the few creatures that people argue is actually worthy of extinction. Forget about tigers or bears; it's the tiny mosquito that is the deadliest animal on Earth. The human misery caused by malaria is undeniable. Nearly 600,000 people died of the disease in 2023, according to the World Health Organization, with the majority of cases in Africa... But recently, the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a research institute in New York, and Arizona State University brought together a group of bioethicists to discuss the potential pitfalls of intentionally trying to drive a species to extinction. In a policy paper published in the journal Science last month, the group concluded that "deliberate full extinction might occasionally be acceptable, but only extremely rarely..."
It's unclear how important malaria-carrying mosquitoes are to broader ecosystems. Little research has been done to figure out whether frogs or other animals that eat the insects would be able to find their meals elsewhere. Scientists are hotly debating whether a broader "insect apocalypse" is underway in many parts of the world, which may imperil other creatures that depend on them for food and pollination... Instead, the authors said, geneticists should be able to use gene editing, vaccines and other tools to target not the mosquito itself, but the single-celled Plasmodium parasite that is responsible for malaria. That invisible microorganism — which a mosquito transfers from its saliva to a person's blood when it bites — is the real culprit.
A nonprofit research consortium called Target Malaria has genetically modified mosquitoes in their labs (which get core funding from the Gates Foundation and from Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife). ), and hopes to deploy them in the wild within five years...
Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is yes, it's OK to eliminate mosquitos.
Some people waste far too much time thinking about silly questions.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the animals that depend on mosquitos for food? Are you ready to see a collapse in spider, bat, and bird populations? You've got to think about the whole food chain.
On the flip side, what if in a twisted way... mosquitos also fulfill population control?
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Bats, dragonflies, birds, and frogs generally eat mosquitoes, but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
Further, most of these genetic solutions involve releasing some form of male mosquito that can sterilize eggs. They are transgenic, meaning that the genes are not natural to the species; their genetic material is unstable. Most transgenic things can't maintain the foreign gene for about 10-20 generations (a mosquito generation is about 3 weeks). So the solution would involve releasing male mosquitoes to fertilize the eggs that sterilize females in the eggs (female mosquitoes lay eggs only once, so a sterilized females in the larval state results in population control of the insect); the best you can hope for is about an 80% reduction of the species, with at best topping out at 90%. Given the speed at which mosquitoes breed, this would overall just reduce the number of mosquitoes in a given area. These are also species-specific situations; it wouldn't hurt the non-disease carrying mosquitoes.
And your point about what you suggested IS twisted; population control? Tell that to the people suffering in Africa, who are the ones who are the subjects of this population control. You'd be singing a different tune if it was your family members dying of malaria. The most effective population control in human history has been industrialization; poverty increases the birth rates, whereas wealth decreases it. Africa's battle with disease is one of many reasons why they struggle to develop as a country; anything that improves health is a step towards a better life for people there which also tends to result in lower birth rates.
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Bats, dragonflies, birds, and frogs generally eat mosquitoes, but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
Sure but that doesnt change the fact that killing off all mosquitos would be taking a massive amount of food out of the food chain. This will have dramatic effects on other insect species which are already in decline and all the animals that eat them and all of the animals that eat those animals and all the animals that eat those animals and so on.
I'm all for reducing human suffering but we should make damn sure we understand the consequences of killing off all mosquitos before we take out such a major, low
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but they're generalist eaters. No creature relies on mosquitoes solely; they eat other insects like flies. Also as someone below pointed out, there are many species of mosquitoes; these kinds of solutions target only the species that carry disease.
You're jumping to the answer that is "No" The question was should we eradicate the mosquito, not should we target disease carrying subspecies in a particular area. The fact that only the latter makes sense objectively means the former is a bad idea.
But you're also missing the point. Just because something doesn't eat one thing exclusively doesn't mean that they can live without it. We're not talking about supplementing the mosquito, we're talking about removing a chunk of the food chain. You can see the imp
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> they're generalist eaters
Humans are also generalist eaters. That doesn't mean there won't be severe problems if you suddenly eliminated, say, all rice crops.
> genetic solutions involve releasing some form of male mosquito that can sterilize eggs ... Most transgenic things can't maintain the foreign gene for about 10-20 generations
Setting aside that your description is a bit wrong but probably just mixed the words up... how exactly can an any mutation - artificially induced or otherwise - that result
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Because the female mosquitoes from the mating are sterile but the males are fine and carry the trait. Presumably those males mate with unaffected females of their generation and produce another generation of sterile females and carrier males. This can continue until there are no remaining fertile females, then they all die out.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
. They release a transgenic male. They use males because males have X and Y chromosomes; females have only X. The male fertilizes the female and she lays eggs. The female is already done, because female mosquitoes only lay one batch of eggs and they're done. From the male side, the females produced are sterile, and the males produced carry the gene to mate with other females and continue to the trait, mating with wils-type females; they do this because the wild type males are still also reproducing with the wild type females. Over generations, because this gene is a foreign gene, it is generally selected out; typically about 20 generations, or about 1 year of time. This will knock down the population, but it will not eliminate it, because it's logistically impossible to release the males over an entire countryside; there will still be plenty of areas where natural males will breed with natural females. Eventually the natural, or wild type, will come back to the areas where transgenic males were released and repopulate the area with normal wildtype mosquitoes, whereas the transgene will be bred out of the species within a few generations.
The reason it doesn't make sense to you is because you're thinking strictly on genomics. The people who research this think not just in terms of genomics, but in terms of demographics, geography, and logistics, along with understanding the very nature of how the species breed, spread, and how they evolve over generations. The simple fact is the wild type species is resilient, and the transgenic males will simply not get to all of the females; it's impossible. In the end, these things end up being about population control, but engineering an insect species like this is logistically speaking effectively impossible.
I didn't go into how incredibly difficult it is to make these transgenic mosquitoes either, which is a whole other thing. However there is real progress, and some are being geared up for test studies in the next few years.
But, but, but..... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Life finds a way!"
All the animals that eat mosquitoes eat other things too. Maybe we don't wipe mosquitoes out "all at once." We can just cull their numbers. Give everything time to adapt. Obliterate them once the time is right.
It would probably help to figure out why other insect populations are collapsing, and turn that around, so the alternative food sources will be available.
Mosquitoes are a blight upon creation! The little bastards have no right to exist! Of course there will be consequences b
Re:But, but, but..... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Life finds a way" was a warning against meddling with poorly understood biological processes... exactly what you would be doing by completely eradicating mosquitos.
Broader Ecological Impact (Score:3)
What about the animals that depend on mosquitos for food?
That's too specific. The more general question we need to know the answer to is what would the ecological impact be of removing mosquitoes from the environment. It might be that some predator populations would decline but it may also be that some other species surges in numbers to fill the ecological gap left by eradicating mosquitoes. It would not be a great improvement if mosquitoes were replaced by some other, potentially worse biting insect or, if the population of predators relying on mosquitoes decli
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Animals can adapt
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When one species is gone from the mix, others tend to fill the void. Mosquitos are not the only food-bug in town.
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I remember when my sister graduated as a chemical engineer with a bias towards biology. She told me, flat out, that mosquitoes had no place in the ecosystem. They could all disappear overnight and any creatures that depended on mosquitoes would find something else.
I don't believe everything I read online or see on TV, but I do tend to trust the experts. 8)
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YES. We should.
Re: Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is going to distribute all this food across millions of square miles? Mosquitoes have wings.
There is more biomass in the mosquito population than the human population.
It's about the mass of the entire annual global food production.
Except mosquitoes only live 1 - 2 months, not 12.
We'd need to upscale food production by a factor of 10 and find a way to distribute it to places humans have never even been, in to tiny pieces 1/400th of a gram, and find a way to make it move on its own, because frogs don't eat things that don't move.
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>>It will be filled with another part of the food chain.
when? like overnight? will bat species that live off of mosquitos immediately shift to some other food source or will their populations collapse before they have the time to make that kind of change in the behaviour of the whole-ass species
Re: Yes (Score:2)
You have no evidence to support that claim, because it has not been studied. Insects are the base of the food chain, and if they are gone we will be too.
Re: Yes (Score:3)
Mosquitos form a tiny portion of the diet of the animals that eat them, including bats. Mosquitos are pollinators, but again. Many othe pollinators pollinate the same species of plants. Making mosquitoes extinct might actually help honey bees by decreasing competition for shared resources. There have been multiple studies, and surprisingly, there is no evidence that removing mosquitoes would cause a trophic cascade, and a great deal of evidence that it would not. We should do it.
Re: Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
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Africa can absolutely feed itself and the notion that it can not is horseshit
You're talking hypotheticals, I'm talking reality. The reality is that Africa cant feed itself https://www.worldvision.org/hu... [worldvision.org]. .
If security issues are causing all of this hunger then how will it not effect supporting an entire ecosystem with food in East Africa which most definitely has security issues? On one hand you're telling me about how lack of security is causing all of this hunger for people in Africa while on the other you're completely ignoring the security problem by claiming keeping all these
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What on earth are you taking about? Everything you bring up supports my own argument. If food is so scarce there for any or all of those reasons how is food being their for millions of wild animals going to be in any way practical?
If conflict is making things too dangerous for people to leave their homes to buy food how the hell are we going to disperse massive amounts of food in the same area?
If people are going hungry because of poverty that means international aid isn't getting enough food to them. How o
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Oh, I didnt know lizards, amphibians, bats etc could eat bird seed. I didn't even know that all insect eating birds ate bird seed https://wildlife.org/insectivo... [wildlife.org]. or that they could all just make due without such a valuable source of protein https://wildlife.org/bird-decl... [wildlife.org] .
It's amazing what one learns when one talks to the ignorant.
Re: Yes (Score:5, Informative)
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So because bats eat other things removing millions of tons of food from the food chain is going to work out fine with zero consequences? Gimme a frick'n break!
East Africa is already experiencing significant declines in insect populations just like everywhere else https://waterjournalistsafrica... [waterjourn...africa.com] . Removing such a plentiful insect species as mosquitos could very well collapse the eco system as it would put an enormous strain on the rest of the insects in the region who already aren't doing well population w
Re: Yes (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, I thought so too. Here in this South-American region there is 9 months out of the year good, sunny weather and 3 months of less sunny, colder and much wetter weather. So, mosquitos are about 10 months of the year a big problem. Not only for people and dengue, but also for dogs. Mosquitos also transfer a disease that has no cure and robs the dog of quality of life. Got several times a young dog/puppy, that somehow got stung by mosquitos and where they were bringing a lot of joy and life, they suddenly
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Did you also think of all the other species that primarly feed on mosquitos? I.e. swallows.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
There are no known species that primarily feed on mosquitos, and swallows don't go after anything that small.
Spend some time observing swallows feeding if you're interested in it and your eyes are good enough.
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The answer is yes, it's OK to eliminate mosquitos.
You've investigated all the possible unintended consequences of eliminating a thoroughly ubiquitous insect from the planet? So you know for sure it's okay? Really?
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We intentionally tried to eradicate smallpox, polio, the bubonic plague, guinea worm and many other diseases. We've also unintentionally driven thousands of species to extinction. A few more makes no difference.
No (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously. It will take a few more centuries until we understand things well enough. Until we do, one such move could kill the human race. Fremi Paradox anyone?
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Obviously. It will take a few more centuries until we understand things well enough. Until we do, one such move could kill the human race. Fremi Paradox anyone?
"I felt a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced [youtube.com]. ~Obi Wan Kenobi
Really? (Score:2)
Until we do, one such move could kill the human race. Fremi [sic] Paradox anyone?
Thosands, if not millions, of species have gone extinct since humans evolved and not all of those extinctions are due to humans.I would agree that ecological studies need to be done before we try this but if we keep some mosquitoes in captivity we can always re-populate the species should the ecological rebalancing cause problems. However, I see no real possibility that such a rebalancing would be an existential threat to us. Indeed, we've already eradicated multiple species including passenger pigeons, do
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Bla bla bla, ... it has never gone wrong before, bla bla bla.
You realize it just needs to go wrong once? As to "a few centuries", by then the human race should be able to feed itself even if things go wrong. Doing something like this now is doing it without backup plan. And "repopulate"? Please. That is utterly naive.
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No. Humans and other animals are much more adaptable than that. We are *constantly* facing changing conditions, from climate change to invasive species. Adaptability is what makes life possible.
One could just as easily argue that we shouldn't have created a smallpox vaccine. I'm thankful that we did, the vaccine (and others) has saved untold millions of lives.
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Bullshit. Humans are not "adaptable" to fast changes at all. They will just die out if that happens. Even the relatively slow changes of climate-change currently prove too fast.
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Do you hear yourself right now?
Humans, physically, are best suited for life on the savannah, in mild climates. And yet, humans have adapted themselves to all sorts of climates, finding ways to live everywhere from the arctic to the equator, from the desert to the rainforest, from the coastlands to the mountains. And all of that took place in human history *before* modern technology such as air conditioning.
What exactly do you mean when you say humans are not adaptable?
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Does partial or total loss of agriculture sound more impressive to you?
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Violent sadistic suicidal primitive? Check. Also dumb as fuck.
Here is an alternate solution: Execute all people operating on your mental level. Would also nicely solve overpopulation.
As much as I hate them (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I hate mosquitos I don't believe we should exterminate them to the point of extinction. Doing so will most likely have unforeseen consequences down the road causing mass damage to the ecosystem. Find ways to fight the parasites instead if possible.
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They currently "fight the parasites" by spraying pesticide indiscriminately on top of everything in residential areas. Targeting one species would be a much more surgical approach.
I've also been told that there is one particular species that feeds on humans, and that it is not native to the Americas. So it is not likely to occupy a critical niche in the ecosystem. Not sure how true that is, though.
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A few years ago my wife starting growing plants in the back yard that she claimed would repel mosquitos and other biting insects, citronella amongst others. At first I was skeptical but it in fact worked. The citronella has a funny smell but you get used to it.
Re:As much as I hate them (Score:5, Informative)
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The world's ecosystem isn't so fragile. It has been dealing with the coming and going of species, as long as life has existed. Life adapts, and it will continue to do so.
Ethical Consequences (Score:2)
Doing so will most likely have unforeseen consequences down the road causing mass damage to the ecosystem.
We should absolutely do ecological studies to determine the likely effects of eradicating the dangerous species of mosquitoes. However, given the benefit to human health we should absolutely not just assume that "bad things" will happen and abandon a plan that could save millions of lives. Indeed, it may be that the largest ecological impact will be human population surges in areas hit currently by mosquitoe-borne diseases like malaria and if that is the case I do not see how it is at all ethical to tell a
Every hour on the hour, we lose a species for $ (Score:4, Insightful)
On average, every hour humans make a species extinct, for no better reason than to extract some more wealth.
How about we extinct some species for a good reason for a change? Malaria alone inflicts about 500,000 deaths per year, and a total economic burden of maybe a trillion dollars or more per year, and really messes up the development of much of the world.
And to eliminate malaria and all other mosquito-borne diseases, we only need to extinct about 34 species out of 3000+ species of mosquito.
Yes, let's do it. And let's also extinct ticks, coddling moth, and cherry fruit fly. None of these are species that feed a lot of other species, and they're all nasty in their own ways.
Re:Every hour on the hour, we lose a species for $ (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Every hour on the hour, we lose a species for $ (Score:4, Interesting)
I was thinking the tsetse fly should be another top candidate, in the past they made it almost impossible to keep animals for livestock or transportation in large swathes of Africa, and the control efforts that continue to this day are massively destructive including wantonly burning natural foliage and killing wild animals they could feed on!
https://www.britannica.com/ani... [britannica.com]
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the control efforts that continue to this day are massively destructive including wantonly burning natural foliage and killing wild animals they could feed on!
A really important point, the alternative to an advanced technological solution is not the preservation of ecology, it's much more primitive and damaging approaches that can accomplish the same result. We will not convince the people who are harmed by the pests to do nothing, so our only options are to give them the better tools to fight them or let them deal with it in their own way.
Politicians first (Score:4, Funny)
A couple of things to consider (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, there are over 3,000 species of mosquito, only a few of which carry human diseases. No one is talking about eliminating every mosquito species.
Secondly, the Aedes egypti and Anopheles gambiae mosquitos (the most common carriers of yellow fever and malaria respectively) are both native to Africa. They're invasive species in most other places (introduced by humans).
There shouldn't be any negative consequences from removing them from non-native locations -- in fact, it should reduce competition for the native mosquito species.
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The people who wrote the headline (and the article) are clueless. That's quite common when general-readership newspapers "report" on scientific stuff.
If you read the actual direct quotes in the article (rather than the reporter's clueless interpretation thereof), it's clear that the research is targeted toward removing disease-carrying mosquitoes, not all mosquitoes.
We absolutely should get rid of them (Score:5, Insightful)
You could replace "mosquitoes" in that headline with polio, smallpox, measles, AIDS, malaria, or any one of a thousand different pathogens. No one is agonizing over eradicating them.
If a particular species of mosquito is a vector for a deadly disease, eliminating that one species provides a net benefit. You don't have to kill all mosquitoes, just the species that are truly dangerous. So yes, do it.
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Except RFK Jr.
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Viruses aren't really even alive, though. They're genetic coding errors that get copied when introduced to a biological system.
It would be a good point if they were alive. But they're not.
Re: We absolutely should get rid of them (Score:2)
If you are likening getting rid of mosquitoes to getting rid of malaria, then you can also liken getting rid of AIDS with getting rid of people testing positive for HIV.
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People carrying AIDS still contribute to society. Mosquitoes don't.
Also if they deliberately engage in infectious activities with unwilling participants, as mosquitoes do, then they should absolutely be eliminated.
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No one eats viruses but quite a lot of species depend on mosquitoes to survive, or eat the mosquito-eaters to survive.
You don't have to kill any mosquitoes, just replace them with a genetically modified version that is resistant to parasites?
Oh, just solve Malaria instead! (Score:2)
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But (certain) Mosquitos are vectors for a whole lot of other diseases that are not as easy to get rid off as Malaria.
Re: Oh, just solve Malaria instead! (Score:2)
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Pollinator (Score:3, Interesting)
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As another poster has noted, only a few of the thousands of mosquito species are a problem for humans. We can leave the other species alone so they can continue to pollinate.
Yes- If you took away turkey, I'd just eat chicken (Score:2)
In the developed world?
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And that's what the situation was with turkey up until the early to mid '60; the only time turkey was available in the markets was Thanksgiving, and then it was only whole birds. If you wanted turkey any other time of the year, you either had to find a restaurant that had it on the menu or special order one from your butcher. Then, somebody had the idea of splitting them in half lengthwise and selling half turkey
The biggest pests of all (Score:2)
scientists have devised powerful genetic tools that may be able to eradicate mosquitoes and other pests once and for all
If I were a sentient alien dispassionate observer, I might well conclude that eliminating humans from Earth would be the most just and - ironically - the most humane way to apply these new genetic tools.
How about (Score:2)
Why don't we engineer larger penises for humans? So big it drastically reduces fertility! I bet you we reduce the population to a reasonable size as most men opt to get bigger than have children!
If anything, you eliminate evil mental cases who either get extremely insecure to the point of insanity over their tiny mushroom penis or others who have botched enlargement surgeries requiring them to IVF dozens of children who hate them.
Query: (Score:2)
I was under the impression that there are very many species of mosquito, and only some of the bite humans.
If the total number of ones that do is only a small percentage of the total, wouldn't an intermediate solution be to breed away (etc) the ones that bite humans? That would seem to have minimal side effects as compared to wiping them out universally.
Fu- (Score:2)
The only good Mosquitoes (Score:2)
Were made of wood in the 1940's.
This rhetorical question seems easy to answer (Score:4, Insightful)
When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence...?
When that species provides no value and brings huge dangers to the world. Hey, if we find we dreadfully miss them for whatever reason, clone 'em and bring them back.
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Hey, if we find we dreadfully miss them for whatever reason, clone 'em and bring them back.
Indeed with Mosquitos it should be feasible to keep a frozen reserve around for the unlikely case that the drawbacks of their eradication outweighs the benefits. Way easier to freeze them then a Passenger Pigeon or a Dodo.
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When that species provides no value and brings huge dangers to the world.
Obviously, providing value is subjective, but when the aliens finally land and aren't fans of reality TV, social media and such, perhaps they'll decide mankind just has to be stopped....
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I think you just described humans. WE are the danger to this world, and provide no value to it :)
My two nickels (since 1c is also being eliminated) (Score:2)
And, if what another poster said is true, that only some mosquitos carry human diseases and the rest could be eliminated, can we assure that the remaining wouldn't be harmed directly or indirectly? Perhaps after mating/evolution?
Lastly, humans mostly suck when it comes to their unintended consequences, always trying to play "clean up" after we finally figur
Sounds good (Score:2)
There are species on this planet that most of us would love to live without. Mosquitos are one of them. Ticks and lice are too.
Since we can easily sequence the DNA, let's do it and keep the friggin' mosquitos in the DNA bank instead of on me.
How About Just 0.3% of Mosquito Species? (Score:2)
The topic is very poorly framed here. There are 3500 known mosquito species. Just 12 are known to cause human disease. Eliminating these 12 that have become evolutionarily co-adapted with pathogens to propagate human (and other mammalian) disease seems unlikely to cause any sort of ecological catastrophe, but certainly this must be thoroughly examined before we try to do it. It will also be essential that we know our methods only target the specific mosquito species.
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How long until a new species evolves for humans after the bad ones are killed off? It obviously happened before. I'd like to find out... by killing them off. But we should see if we can kill the source off since that helps the broader picture of fighting pathogens.
Engineer me a grasshopper... (Score:2)
How about mosquitos that can pollinate plants instead of suck blood?
We have for a long time been able (Score:2)
We have for a long time been able to rid the world of ourselves. I think, it's about time. Yes, we should. Actually, I've never liked any of you very much. You basically had it coming.
Yes, next question (Score:2)
Nature is a stone cold bitch that's kill
Re: Yes, next question (Score:2)
We don't need to eradicate all mosquitos (Score:2)
For ONCE, Betteridge's Law is "Yes" (Score:2)
We're already doing this. (Score:2)
Some studies suggest that we're extinguishing 2% of insect biomass per year. We're extincting insects all the time because it's convenient to raze a forest to grow cattle. Even doing the research in preparation for intentionally extinction a mosquito species would probably tell us all sorts of horrors we're storing up for the future ... and we probably won't change anything.
Insectivores (Score:2)
Quite a lot of animals feed on insects, and then some carnivores might feed on them.
If you overfish sardines, anything bigger than a sardine may also suffer a population decline, as it is a staple food for lots of yummy fish and also marine mammals..
Certainly not. (Score:2)
Mosquitoes are a core part of the ecosystem and a critical part of the food chain. It is also obvious that they are likely a critical part of ongoing mammalian herd immunisation. For obvious reasons.
Yes, they transfer some really bad diseases like Malaria or that recently arisen nightmare Zika (holy cow, creepy stuff), but we have no idea of how much good they actually do and I don't want to find out the hard way when they're all dead.
Regular protection and heightened awareness in areas where Dengue, Malari
What do the mosquito larvae eat? (Score:2)
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"Mucking about with nature" is something humans do well. Agriculture is a prime example of this. We very deliberately and persistently, alter our crops and our livestock to make them more productive. And think of how the invention of the automobile decimated the population of horses. Wait, horses are around and still doing fine.
The world's ecosystem is constantly changing and adapting. It's not so fragile as people seem to think.
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If you think growing plants doesn't involve killing species of insects on a massive scale, you haven't been paying attention to what farmers actually do to raise their crops.
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Huh? I don't follow you.