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Comment by WaxProlix | Hacker News Reader

I recall hearing when I was younger that mosquitoes were an outlier in the natural world. With most species, the balance of any food web would be pretty thoroughly disrupted by a major culling. As I heard it, this isn't the case for mosquitoes - if you could press a button and kill them all tomorrow, most ecosystems would be largely unimpacted.

Am I just making this up/misremembering it?

Edit: found a few sources.

Pro-mosquitocide:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes...

Anti-mosquitocide:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-...

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I believe I recall reading that if we were to eliminate only the disease carry mosquitoes, those responsible for transmitting maleria, dengue fever, Ross river virus) there ought not be a problem in the ecological web of life as other mosquitoes would fill the void.

Yes. Most mosquito species do not actually bite.

They don't feed on people, or they don't feed in general? If the latter, how do they even survive? They eat in their larval form but then not as adults?

The Wikipedia article has more detail:

Typically, both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices, but in many species the mouthparts of the females are adapted for piercing the skin of animal hosts and sucking their blood as ectoparasites. In many species, the female needs to obtain nutrients from a blood meal before it can produce eggs, whereas in many other species, it can produce more eggs after a blood meal. A mosquito has a variety of ways of finding its prey, including chemical, visual, and heat sensors.[36] Both plant materials and blood are useful sources of energy in the form of sugars, and blood also supplies more concentrated nutrients, such as lipids, but the most important function of blood meals is to obtain proteins as materials for egg production.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults

Let's pick out each mosquito one by one to check which one we should kill or release then.

I did a bit of research a while back, and it seemed to agree. Mosquitoes don't keep any other species in check (since their victims rarely die), and they aren't a primary food source for anything; bats will snap them up all night long, but they're still a minority of the stomach contents because they're so small. They are pollinators--I hadn't known that--but, again, they're not primary pollinators for anything, not like bees.

I don't recall reading anything specific about the larvae's importance in aquatic biomes, though, so the anti-mosquitocide guy may have a point.

Maybe they keep bats too busy to eat a more nutritious prey animal, and keep the population from expanding though malnourishment? Similar to the diet of a panda bear, though they unfortunately have no higher-caloric alternative.

I think mammals are smart enough to eat the food with the most nutritions per effort.

Pandas and Koalas have extremely poor diets in terms of nutrition. It's likely there are other examples as well.

Looks like evolutionary dead end.

I've heard that certain places have remained naturally pristine because mosquitoes have prevented humans from establishing there. I think there is something to this line of thinking.

These tend to be swampy wetlands, and people have drained and developed swamps all the time for hundreds of years.

... in part because they hate all the bugs.

Mosquitoes are also pollinators.

I believe orchids are one flower that is mostly pollinated by mosquitoes.

In this case, the particular species that carries Zika (aedes aegypti) does not pollinate any plant species in any meaningful way.

I believe this is the case for most organisms. Even humans are included.

Only a relative few would cause wide spread extinction.

Your "pro" articles: Nature, and National Geographic.

Your "anti" article: Gawker.

Yeah, I think we're safe.

While unlikely a factor in this case, I wouldn't be so quick to trust National Geographic as it is a for-profit company owned by 21st Century Fox (of Fox News fame). Its credibility shouldn't be categorized on equal footing as Nature.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9296815/national-geographi...

It's important to note that the magazine is owned (partially) by Fox, but the National Geographic Society is still its own thing.

They are a food source, but generally not a critical one.

I can only confirm that I heard that as well, but have no idea how true it is.

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