One of the reasons mosquito populations are out of control is that we’ve killed off a lot of their predators. No mosquito anywhere is a keystone species, and you would only need to wipe out the vector species. Other, less harmful species of mosquito would fill in nicely with less competition.
At least, that’s the theory. Previous theories included introducing mosquitofish to eat the larvae, but that backfired because the moquitofish are aggressive and don’t eat as many mosquitos as local predators driven off by the mosquitofish.
Bats eat tbem, but they won’t go extinct without mosquitos as food. There also aren’t enough bats currently to keep the mosquito populations under control due to other factors preventing abat population boom.
loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
You probably couldn’t as the ecosystem is linking into each other
lowleveldata@programming.dev 3 months ago
I’d take 1 global apocalypse for having all those suckers die. Thank you.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Well, too bad. We’ve got several already.
madcaesar@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I don’t know man… So many species died out naturally and unnaturally and things moved along. I’d guess wager we can do without them 😝
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Typical human.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And you’re not?
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
One of the reasons mosquito populations are out of control is that we’ve killed off a lot of their predators. No mosquito anywhere is a keystone species, and you would only need to wipe out the vector species. Other, less harmful species of mosquito would fill in nicely with less competition.
At least, that’s the theory. Previous theories included introducing mosquitofish to eat the larvae, but that backfired because the moquitofish are aggressive and don’t eat as many mosquitos as local predators driven off by the mosquitofish.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 months ago
What about bats?
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Bats eat tbem, but they won’t go extinct without mosquitos as food. There also aren’t enough bats currently to keep the mosquito populations under control due to other factors preventing abat population boom.
Gabu@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Mosquitoes are pollinators…
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
There are 3,500 different species of mosquito, and like 10 that are responsible for most disease transmissions.
A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 3 months ago
We have enough pollinators