Let’s face it mosquitos are fuc*ing irritating and they Suck (literally). I want to know what would happen if mosquitoes went extinct, how would it change the nature.
PS: If you have any LiFe HaCk to getting invisible to mosquitos please share (in a group of 10 people and 10 mosquitos, I’ll get 10 bites and others none)
In: Biology
Long story short, there would be no downside to a man-made extinction of human-biting mosquitoes and the only reason we haven’t achieved it is that they’re such efficient parasites that modern science hasn’t found a way yet.
People are going to swarm this question (pun intended) with half-assed answers about how they’re important pollinators, or that another insect would fill their niche, or how fish would starve to death, but science says that they’re invasive species in every region that humans currently populate.
If we could wipe out the nuisance species, nature would return to a pre-existing equilibrium, and would be healthier because the species filling the vacuum wouldn’t be disease vectors.
As for invisibility, the best thing is DEET, however it causes skin irritation, and may or may not be a human carcinogen.
There are 3500 species of mosquitos but only a handful are responsible for transmitting human diseases. There have been simulations run that if these were eliminated that other flies/mosquitos would fill in the niches.
So there have been proposals and even in lab experiments which kill mosquitos. Mainly by making mosquitos only produce male offspring. I believe the gmo mosquitos were accidentally released in Brazil but I have heard much about that since.
Mosquitos nymphs or young are an especially important food source in wetland ecosystems. Fish, turtles, and dragonfly nymphs are some major predators that feed on mosquito nymphs.
Mosquitos are also pollinators like bees. Both males and females actively feed on plant products and pollinate specific plants.
That being said, the bigger problem with any kind of extermination is the accidental killing of similar creatures in the area (mosquito insecticides are known to be better killers of other similarly sized insects, so trying to wipe them out could exterminate an endemic species of insect) and biomagnification, where the concentration of toxins in living tissue increases with each step up the food chain. Finally, insecticide-resistant mosquitos are a huge threat from poorly executed extermination efforts that fail to fully exterminate the mosquito population. This becomes an issue over time as we need to continue to develop new insecticides with unknown side effects.
It’s not clear that the would be a lasting impact it we were able to get rid of them. It’s something that’s been debated at length. [Here’s a good article](https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a) on what the impacts might be.
Dig around a bit man. I saw a paper once on how if mosquitos died off entirely other insects would reproduce in greater numbers to fill the void in the food chain. They are in no way essential. I’m fixing to lay down or I’d do it myself. I promise, it’s out there.
Sadly, mosquitoes are somewhat important to the ecosystems they live in.
They are a core food source for a lot of other creatures, and they also pollinate certain varieties of flowers.
In regard to becoming invisible to them, the best I can think of is insect repellent.
Mosquitos are food for other things. Bigger things. And face it, there’s a fuckton of them. So if that food source goes away and there isn’t a ready replacement (very likely) there are ripple effects up and down the food chain. Because everything is connected to everything else. The point is that you can have all kinds of unintended consequences on an ecosystem by wiping out a particular species if you do not have a complete understanding of how that species relates with others in that ecosystem.
There’s actually a **embellished** **story** (with many versions) that illustrates this point nicely. It focuses on DDT (an insecticide) being used to wipe out mosquitos in which spread malaria in Borneo.
1)The WHO sprayed DDT indiscriminately, which reduced the mosquito population. But it also killed other insects, like a wasp species.
2) The wasp’s food were caterpillars which ate the grasses that the villagers used to cover their homes. Without the wasps, the caterpillars went crazy and roofs started to cave in.
3) The dead wasps were consumed by geckoes, which were not as affected by the DDT and didn’t die immediately, but were a food source for the local feral cat population. The cats which ate the geckoes died from the DDT poisoning.
4) The drop in the cat population allowed rats to multiply out of control, which lead to spread of infectious disease via rats.
The solution was to airdrop a new population of cats onto the island — “operation Cat drop”
[https://youtu.be/17BP9n6g1F0](https://youtu.be/17BP9n6g1F0)
It takes ten pounds of mosquitoes to feed one pound of the minnows that prey on their larvae, it takes ten pounds of minnows, to grow a delicious one pound Crappie you might be hoping to catch while fishing and swatting at the mosquitos that prey upon you. Only female mosquitos bite for blood the males live on nectar and are important pollinators for many species of plants. As annoying as they can be they are a crucial link in many food chains.
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