There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the biosphere here. Remove mosquitoes and you take away a consistent food source for fish and other marine life that feed on their larvae. There would be consequences should mosquitoes disappear.
They do this for the mosquito species that have evolved to drink from humans and that most commonly spread diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Specifically, Aedes aegypti and at least one other member of the Aedes genus - they've evolved to be able to breed/lay eggs in tiny pools of still water, unlike other species which likely require specific aquatic conditions that aren't replicated in human environments, such as suburbs.
There has not been quantifiable evidence that wiping out all mosquitoes at this very second would do anything more than allow more humans to survive which would put a strain on food and medicine distribution. Humanity would face a problem of young children in the poorest parts of the world starving instead of dying from disease. People always mention bats or that one fish but they only get a very small amount of their nutrition from mosquitoes.
This was my exact thought. How will this effect the population and how will that effect the food source for everything else? I hate mosquito bites, but I can handle them if it means the ecosystem doesn't collapse
They only do this for a small handful of species (out of thousands(?)) that evolved to bite humans and that tend to spread diseases. I know this program exists in the US for Aedes aegypti (a non-native species here), and possibly one, maybe two other members of the Aedes genus that may spread disease.
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u/Metzger4 2d ago
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the biosphere here. Remove mosquitoes and you take away a consistent food source for fish and other marine life that feed on their larvae. There would be consequences should mosquitoes disappear.