Should we wipe mosquitoes off the face of the Earth?

[Post]

Can we get rid of fleas? What damage would that cause?

[Shadowferal]

Well shit...there actually is an argument in favor of mosquitoes.

To wit: Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?

More than a million people, mostly from poorer nations, die each year from mosquito-borne diseases including malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever.
Biologist Olivia Judson has supported "specicide" of 30 types of mosquito. She said doing this would save one million lives and only decrease the genetic diversity of the mosquito family by 1%. "We should consider the ultimate swatting," she told the New York Times.

In Britain, scientists at Oxford University and the biotech firm Oxitec have genetically modified (GM) the males of Aedes aegypti - a mosquito species that carries both the Zika virus and dengue fever. These GM males carry a gene that stops their offspring developing properly. This second generation of mosquitoes then die before they can reproduce and become carriers of disease themselves.

About three million of these modified mosquitoes were released on to a site on the Cayman Islands between 2009 and 2010. Oxitec reported a 96% reduction in mosquitoes compared with nearby areas. A trial currently taking place on a site in Brazil has reduced the numbers by 92%.
So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? According to Phil Lounibos, an entomologist at Florida University, mosquito eradication "is fraught with undesirable side effects".

He says mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further up and down the food chain.
However, some say that the role of mosquito species as food and pollinators would quickly be filled by other insects. "We're not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes," Judson said.

But for Lounibos, the fact this niche would be filled by another insect is part of the problem. He warns that mosquitoes could be replaced by an insect "equally, or more, undesirable from a public health viewpoint". Its replacement could even conceivably spread diseases further and faster than mosquitoes today.

Science writer David Quammen has argued that mosquitoes have limited the destructive impact of humanity on nature. "Mosquitoes make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable," he said.

Rainforests, home to a large share of our total plant and animal species, are under serious threat from man-made destruction. "Nothing has done more to delay this catastrophe over the past 10,000 years, than the mosquito," Quammen said.

[Reeve]

Yes, please. I have 2 Zika Intake Ports on my legs right now, which are itching like mad.

[jimboa24]

The article in question advocates only wiping out the specific subspecies of mosquito that has evolved and adapted to man's urban environment, and carries the zika virus...not ALL mosquitoes everywhere. MMO-C posters need some reading comprehension.

I doubt we can wipe them all out, but he'll, if we can, we should. We're not talking about killing off all mosquitoes, just a specific subspecies, and one that has evolved specifically to modern man's environment. Fuck them.

[Reeve]

No, mosquitoes are food for a lot of birds etc. removing them completely would really screw things up.

From what I've read on the subject, there is enough biomass from other creatures out there to completely replace the loss of mosquitoes.

[Deleted]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,[2] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.[3][4][5] Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million,[6] of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.[7]

Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation—where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established.[8] A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance,[5] although some species, called living fossils, survive with virtually no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years.

Mass extinctions are relatively rare events; however, isolated extinctions are quite common. Only recently have extinctions been recorded and scientists have become alarmed at the current high rate of extinctions.[9] Most species that become extinct are never scientifically documented. Some scientists estimate that up to half of presently existing plant and animal species may become extinct by 2100.

Other species will survive, they always do, and humans can adapt.

[Crissi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction



Other species will survive, they always do, and humans can adapt.

Sure, although it may be tough for a bit while other species do so. However, you also advocated eliminating ALL insects, arachnids, and to keep eliminating until balance is found. This argument is really being ecologically ignorant, since insects and bats are our main pollinators, and there simply isnt enough biomass of anything else to fix that gap.

[JoshuaNLG]

Could the world cope with millions upon millions of more lives suddenly surviving each year?

Let's theoretically say the population of the Earth is 7 billion, i know it is, but bare with me.

If we remove Mosquitos that spread disease to the human population, that's a lot of lives saved.

In 5 years times (again, theoretically) there are now 12 Billion people on the planet. that's a pretty large increase. Do we have the resources to manage this? I don't really think we do.

I personally believe we need to sort out the resource problem the worlds suffering with before we think about changing something that'll drastically increase the population of the planet.

I said something similar on a topic on Reddit and was downvoted to oblivion, i still stand by what i say though. I just don't think the world has enough resources to cope with a population increase that would occur if Mosquitos were made extinct.

In 1960 the population of the planet was half of what it is now, now add 1 million additional people not dying a year from mosquitos and let's say a 1/3rd of those are giving birth to a single infant each year, that adds up. Fast.

[Deletedaccount1]

Aren't they necessary for our ecosystem? I can't imagine that wiping out mosquitos would have any sort of positive effect...if I'm wrong then I'm totally down for exterminating the shit out of them.

It would save millions of lives every year.

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Could the world cope with millions upon millions of more lives suddenly surviving each year?

Let's theoretically say the population of the Earth is 7 billion, i know it is, but bare with me.

If we remove Mosquitos that spread disease to the human population, that's a lot of lives saved.

In 5 years times (again, theoretically) there are now 12 Billion people on the planet. that's a pretty large increase. Do we have the resources to manage this? I don't really think we do.

The world population would never, ever go up that fast even if you made half of the diseases in the world obsolete.

[wowaccounttom]

no..

if those go, bats go...
if bats go, other insects will thrive
if more insects thrive, a species that eats insects will see a major population growth
if a species that eats insects sees a major population growth, there wont be any more Anime or Hentai~!

;p

this cant be allowed.

[JoshuaNLG]

It would save millions of lives every year.

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The world population would never, ever go up that fast even if you made half of the diseases in the world obsolete.

Well, no it definitely wouldn't go up that fast, It'd probably be more around 1.2 to 1.5 million increase per year. Given that mosquitos kill on average a million people a year, and those people will eventually have children.

[Deletedaccount1]

Well, no it definitely wouldn't go up that fast, It'd probably be more around 1.2 to 1.5 million increase per year. Given that mosquitos kill on average a million people a year, and those people will eventually have children.

I'm just saying that by your logic we shouldn't pursue a cure for cancer because the potential resource costs of the lives saved is too great.

[Purpleisbetter]

Only a fraction of the mosquitos feed on blood.

So, wipe the tiny minority off the planet.

Or at least, wipe them out from cities. With barely any pollination to do in a concrete dominated context; they are free proliferate only because of the amount of blood those b*es can easily find.

Extinction for the bloodsuckers.

[Dug]

Well, no it definitely wouldn't go up that fast, It'd probably be more around 1.2 to 1.5 million increase per year. Given that mosquitos kill on average a million people a year, and those people will eventually have children.

The planet can sustain a hell of a lot more people than we currently have but could not support a western diet that's for sure. Even now we could solve starvation across the globe but then pesky politics come into play and that's what really fucks it all up. Humans with even double outrworld population would survive but we would need to stop "fighting over resources", stop eating so much meat and work together to evenly distribute the food. Of course... that's never going to happen though. Not in our life time anyways.

[Osmeric]

Only a fraction of the mosquitos feed on blood.

Females of most species of mosquitoes feed on blood. Did you mean human blood?

[Deleted]

Females of most species of mosquitoes feed on blood. Did you mean human blood?

Females of the human species feed on your wallets.

[Lartok]

Any critter that survives by sucking human blood doesn't really fill an ecological niche.

They can go the way of the dodo and humanity would be better off.

A) You literally explained their ecological niche.
B) Only females feed on blood
C) Humanity being "better off" is worse for everything else on the planet in the long run, including humanity.

[Shakou]

Holy crap some of the replies in here are some downright ignorant uneducated shit posts I've ever read on this board and this board has a whole lot of shit posts.

Anyone in favor of this nonsense has absolutely no formal education in any branch of science let alone biology and there is nothing else to say about it.

[Purpleisbetter]

@Osmeric

Yup, only a few over the 3.500 species are attracted to humans.


Btw If you guys are concerned so much about world population, you could decrease the numbers by eliminating yourself and your family.

No wait, you'd rather let Africans or Asians to die to keep our numbers in check. Right?

[Vynny]

I gotta say, I absolutely despise bugs and kill them whenever I see them except for spiders. You might wonder why, and the answer is simple, spiders eat mosquitoes, and as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so I make sure not to kill any spiders for the sake of them killing mosquitoes.