Yes. Mosquitos are staple foods in their food webs. Fish, amphibians, bats, and plenty more eat them and their larvae and rely on them. Getting rid of them would cause a catastrophic trophic cascade.
A quick google search says that on average some species of bats such as little brown bats can consume as many as 1200 mosquitoes per hour while hunting/feeding.
So I’m guessing that would be really really bad for a lot of different bats, birds, fish, and other things that eat them.
We think that eliminating mosquitoes wouldn’t be a major environmental impact. But if a brief history check teaches us anything, it’s that we often tragically underestimate our impact on the environment.
They’re actually studying this, we can just wipe out the buggers via CRISPRing sterile mosquitoes into the population. We have the means; we just want to make sure that wiping out Malaria is worth the side effects that it would cause. Like, nobody likes Malaria, but if it causes a global famine, that’s worse. So we’ve got to be smart about it.
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Probably. A lot of other animals eat mosquitos. Could cause a chain effect.
Yes. Mosquitos are staple foods in their food webs. Fish, amphibians, bats, and plenty more eat them and their larvae and rely on them. Getting rid of them would cause a catastrophic trophic cascade.
Bats & birds would lose a critically important food source.
Removing an entire link in the food chain creates what’s called a trophic cascade and they’re devastating to the ecology of an area.
For example, less birds = more grasshoppers = more dead dry vegetation = more wildfires
It would impact any animal that hunts mosquitoes as prey
Yes, mosquitoes are food to other animals
A quick google search says that on average some species of bats such as little brown bats can consume as many as 1200 mosquitoes per hour while hunting/feeding.
So I’m guessing that would be really really bad for a lot of different bats, birds, fish, and other things that eat them.
There are only ~4 species of mosquitoes that feed on humans out of the hundreds
If you only got rid of them the effect on the environment would be drastically less than most people here would say
Yes.
We think that eliminating mosquitoes wouldn’t be a major environmental impact. But if a brief history check teaches us anything, it’s that we often tragically underestimate our impact on the environment.
Who knows but I say let’s find out
They’re actually studying this, we can just wipe out the buggers via CRISPRing sterile mosquitoes into the population. We have the means; we just want to make sure that wiping out Malaria is worth the side effects that it would cause. Like, nobody likes Malaria, but if it causes a global famine, that’s worse. So we’ve got to be smart about it.