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There’s quite a huge domino effect in the food chain if we would cause mass extinction to mosquitoes as they are the food for many species of birds which are then food for the next thing and so on.

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BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m no expert but what I’ve heard is that there are lots of mosquitoes that don’t bite which are more important for the food chain, but the ones that do bite make up a super small part so if we only eliminated the biting species there would still be plenty of other non-malaria-carrying mosquitoes for the food chain.

At least that’s the theory.

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Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Surely something else could be encouraged to fill in the gap? Would love to see more fireflies.

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- ThePyroPython@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well in theory yes. However there are billions upon billions of mosquitos and therefore, despite their small size, they are a large bio-mass.
  
  If we try and remove a large bio-mass like that from the ecosystem there’s bound to be knock-on effects in the food chain. We need to be sure that gap does get filled and what would fill that gap doesn’t have any effects that could be worse than Malaria i.e. an insect that could swarm and cause famine.
  
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  - Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Oh like a plague of locus? Interesting, so the people that are introducing infertile mates into the swarm have they evaluated such risk?
    
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    ThePyroPython@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m no expert in biology, not my science as I dropped it after highschool, so I’m not going to pretend I know much.
    
    But I do know that removing large parts of bio-mass from the ecosystem will have consequences that need to be considered.
    
    As far as I’ve read about sterile mosquito introduction is that it’s an attempt at population reduction not extermination. I’m guessing this will allow the experts in this field to study the effect this effort has on mosquito populations, malaria rates, and other insect and mosquito predator populations.
    
    Also our understanding of biology has come on leaps and bounds and I expect that within the next 50 years (barring a catastrophic event that impacts humanity) we’ll have much more control over the ecosystem and I hope that allows us to improve human life and be better stewards of the environment.
    
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KillerTofu@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Are there species of birds that their sole source of food is mosquitos?

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