If we could quantify that, and the outcome was enticing, we could release a bunch of genetically modified sterile mosquitoes that would quickly erase whole populations.
A scientist has considered that issue, and the conclusion is that we could all live quite happily without any mosquitoes in the world.
Hello! I’m a freelance science journalist living in New York with my ball python, Agamemnon Fang. I spent the last few years as a marine geochemist by day, contributing editor for CBS SmartPlanet at night. Before that, I was a news intern for Nature in Washington, D.C., an editorial intern at Discover in New York, and a reporter for the infamous Point Reyes Light in West Marin, California.
In 2008, I graduated from the Earth & Environmental Science and Journalism dual-master’s program at Columbia University. I conducted my Earth Science master’s research on, broadly speaking, Climate Change and Human Evolution at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where I used geochemical analyses to understand paleoclimatic changes in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. And for my Journalism master’s project — “Salamander Eggs and Hyena Phalluses” — I narrated the discoveries of two novel life histories (or biological oddities). At the University of California, Berkeley, I studied Integrative Biology (evolution and natural history) and English literature (19th-20th century novel and experimental fiction). I spent a couple years at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as a georeferencer, a curatorial/field/research/lab assistant, and I skinned and stuffed birds and rodents. (You can also find my immortalized birds at the American Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and Yale Peabody Museum.)
Yes, she has a degree and experience. No, I'm not prepared to accept interns 2 years out of college as authoritative experts when it comes to planetwide ecological policy.
It works better than trapping & killing.
I once heard a modified version of the plan, where you release male mosquitos with a "driving Y chromisome" - that is, a Y chromisome with a mutation that leads to male offspring. Supposedly this should spread in a population even when but eventually leads to extinction.
There is obviously the question of whether it would be sufficient, in time - the figures around time-frame were surprisingly short - but that's not a solid guarantee. Even if it just produced a substantial collapse for a couple years, it might help substantially in fighting malaria, though.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14422440 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_insect_technique
Then rinse and repeat.