This article was published in the 24th issue of sanlian life weekly in 2017, with the original title "if all mosquitoes die out".
Summer is here, and mosquitoes are active again.
No one in the world is likely to like mosquitoes, which, in addition to being annoying, spread deadly infections. Bill Gates once said that mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal on earth, and it makes sense. Mosquito-borne malaria alone sickens nearly 300 million people each year, killing more than 700,000 of them and costing billions of dollars. In this case, why don't we try to get rid of mosquitoes altogether?
Political correctness is everything these days, and protecting species diversity is Paramount. Although human misbehavior has indirectly led to the extinction of thousands of species, the only species that humans have actively eliminated so far is the smallpox virus, and all others are accidentally killed. So, if someone publicly calls for the mosquito species to be wiped out, a lot of people will come out against it.
One objection: only a few hundred of the more than 3,500 species that have been discovered bite, and even fewer can spread disease, so we don't have to kill them all, just the most dangerous ones. Kill off, for example, Anopheles gambiae, which carries malaria, and Aedes aegypti, which carries dengue, yellow fever and zika.
This reason is certainly valid. But it's not just infectious diseases that make mosquitoes annoying. It's the discomfort of being bitten by mosquitoes and the physical and psychological problems that mosquitoes cause when they disrupt sleep that most people are concerned about. The amount of money that humans spend on mosquitoes is astronomical. What's wrong with that money?
As a result, a number of people have seriously studied the possibility of completely eliminating mosquitoes and the impact on the ecological environment. A review published in the July 22, 2010, issue of the journal Nature concluded that if the world ran out of mosquitoes, there would be an impact on the planet's ecosystems, but not as severe as everyone thought.
First of all, the biggest mosquito population on the planet isn't in the rainforests, it's in the arctic. Mosquitoes in this area breed in summer in such large Numbers that they can form a mosquito cloud. These mosquitoes feed mainly on herbivores, and a single arctic reindeer can suck up to 300 milliliters of blood per day in the summer, which has serious implications for the breeding population. If all the mosquitoes in the arctic die out, there could be a significant increase in the number of large herbivores in the arctic, potentially affecting the local environment. What's more, reindeer tend to choose windy places to avoid mosquitoes, and if mosquitoes disappear altogether, reindeer will spread to areas they were afraid to go before, which will also have some impact on the environment. Taken together, the authors suggest that the biggest impact of mosquito extinctions is likely to be in the arctic, but that the impact could easily be addressed by other means.
There are certainly no shortage of mosquitoes in tropical and temperate regions, but the biomass is not large because mosquitoes are so small. It is true that many animals feed on mosquitoes or their larvae, such as fish, birds, lizards, frogs and bats, but no animal has ever been found to feed on mosquitoes alone. If mosquitoes are eliminated, they should be able to easily find substitutes. For example, many people think bats eat mosquitoes, but bats' main source of food is the much larger moths. An autopsy found that less than 2% of the average bat's stomach is made up of mosquitoes.First of all, the biggest mosquito population on the planet isn't in the rainforests, it's in the arctic. Mosquitoes in this area breed in summer in such large Numbers that they can form a mosquito cloud. These mosquitoes feed mainly on herbivores, and a single arctic reindeer can suck up to 300 milliliters of blood per day in the summer, which has serious implications for the breeding population. If all the mosquitoes in the arctic die out, there could be a significant increase in the number of large herbivores in the arctic, potentially affecting the local environment. What's more, reindeer tend to choose windy places to avoid mosquitoes, and if mosquitoes disappear altogether, reindeer will spread to areas they were afraid to go before, which will also have some impact on the environment. Taken together, the authors suggest that the biggest impact of mosquito extinctions is likely to be in the arctic, but that the impact could easily be addressed by other means.
There are certainly no shortage of mosquitoes in tropical and temperate regions, but the biomass is not large because mosquitoes are so small. It is true that many animals feed on mosquitoes or their larvae, such as fish, birds, lizards, frogs and bats, but no animal has ever been found to feed on mosquitoes alone. If mosquitoes are eliminated, they should be able to easily find substitutes. For example, many people think bats eat mosquitoes, but bats' main source of food is the much larger moths. An autopsy found that less than 2% of the average bat's stomach is made up of mosquitoes.The impact of mosquitoes on tropical rainforests is mainly reflected in the blocking of humans. Mosquito-borne diseases have long kept tropical rainforests off limits to the ancients, who were wary of venturing into them. If mosquitoes disappear, they will do harm to these forests. But for this reason, the effects can be controlled by other means as well, not by much.
In short, while mosquitoes are indeed part of the ecological chain, they are so small that their effects are easily replaced and compensated for. Considering the impact that mosquitoes have on human life, the benefits would outweigh the disadvantages if they were wiped out.
Of course, mosquitoes are resilient creatures, and it's not easy to kill them off. But if humans can agree on this, it is not impossible to create sterile or male-only mosquitoes through genetic modification and release them into the wild.