Comment by timmg
4 years ago
> In the long term, I think that many mosquito species will be driven to extinction within the next 30 years.
I honestly don't know: will this affect the ecosystems? I think (at least) dragonflies eat mosquitoes. No idea how much the depend on them for food.
There was a study somewhere claiming that it wouldn't. Only a small fraction of mosquito species bite humans, and according to the study, none were particularly important to their ecosystems.
This is always such an astonishing question to me. What happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from millions of humans to billions in the ecological timescale of the blink of an eye?
One mention of "gene" and you attract all the conspiracy theory evolution deniers that suspect the upcoming zombie apocalypse behind the most mundane technology, all the while combusted dinosaurs takes them to their job.
Don't worry, "the ecosystems" are perfectly fine with things appearing and disappearing constantly for the most random reasons.
I'm not sure if you're being serious here.
What happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from millions of humans to billions is the extinction of many species, and disappearance of biodiversity in general :
> In absolute terms, the planet has lost 58% of its biodiversity since 1970 according to a 2016 study by the World Wildlife Fund. [0]
The ecosystems are definitely not 'perfectly fine' if we keep messing with them [1]
If you want something less dry than pure numbers, you can check the docuserie "Our Planet" on Netflix
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity#Threats [1]https://www.science.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.345.6195....
>What happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from millions of humans to billions in the ecological timescale of the blink of an eye?
Well, its called "the sixth mass extinction", so I'd guess it isn't good.
bats eat mosquitoes, frogs, fish eat larvae..
Since humans only care about cute animals, you should probably add hummingbirds to your list.