Ecology: A world without mosquitoes

I’ve seen researchers suggesting that mosquitoes aren’t a big enough part of anything’s diet to be missed: https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

> What can go wrong? Not that much [1]. > Who needs frogs and swallows anyway?!? They were fine before we introduced Aedes aegypti to North America in the 17th century [2]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5938790/

In fact, there's certain belief in the Scientific community that (human biting, desease spreading) mosquitoes could safely be eradicated from the planet without impacting on the ecosystem. https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

I once saw an article asking biologists this very question. I wish I could find it. What I recall is: * some species of mosquitos are an important part of ecosystems, e.g. a big chunk of biomass in tundra regions. (I didn't even know there were any mosquitos there!) * but the specific species that carry malaria: no. They gave some general platitudes about niches and every species being important... Almost. These ones, kill them all. The important stuff these mosquitos do can be done by other insects. Edit: https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a looks pretty similar to what I read. Either this one is slightly more nuanced or my memory dropped some of the nuance.

"Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn't it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang." Some ecosystems would be altered for sure but it doesn't appear to be widely believed that there would be serious disruption. "There are 3,500 named species of mosquito, of which only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans." We know we don't need them and we don't believe that the earth needs them, but we could start with eradicating the couple hundred species that pester us. https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

As posted to a sister comment, I think Nature's review -- discussed in Radiolab -- is what people are thinking of. https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/kill-...

> Except for all the living things that eat mosquitos, and which in turn get eaten by other things, or eat other pests besides mosquitoes The mosquitoes that cause disease in humans are almost uniquely ecologically useless [1]. Particularly in North America, where the Aedes aegypti mosquito is "believed to have arrived to the Americas during the 17th century by ship during the slave trade" [2]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5938790/

> Mosquitoes are ecologically important pollinators Source? Because the research I’ve seen for disease-causing mosquitoes says nope [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a

I think people are looking for this review in Nature, where they asked a bunch of ecologists if we could eradicate mosquitoes and the consensus was basically fine with it. https://www.nature.com/articles/466432a I think there's even an argument to be made that we should increase our risk tolerance relative to the scale of the harm, and if you study mosquitoes for even a little bit, the harm is off the charts. Fortunately ecologists pretty uniformly agree this is an easy case.