Comment by quotemstr
7 months ago
Another example: mosquitos. We can and should drive them to extinction. The species that feed on humans are nowhere food-web-critical. It's an arbitrary and wrong judgement that we should preserve mosquitos just because they happened to evolve with us. So what if eradicating them would be unnatural? So what if it would technically be a reduction in biodiversity? Not everything natural is good or optimal.
Mosquito introduction is an historical event (1820) in Hawaii (New Zealand, the Caribbean, etc). This devastated local bird populations driving many to extinction and halving the avian population in approximately a year due to virus propagation. The death of the birds led to less seed dispersal, loss of forest, and increased susceptibility to invasive plants.
Some are ancient, but have adapted to thrive in some human environments, but have spread well past their original areas by colonialism, slave trade, shipping, and war. The idea that modern mosquitoes are some "natural" ecosystem element is pretty funny. Perhaps they have destroyed the habitat that once existed and driven out competing species which once fit into the niche, but they are in most places relatively modern in ways other biting flies are not. The growing effects of malaria are not only on humans, but other animals including both chimps and reptiles as well.
Anopheles/Aedes/Culex mosquitos are the grey goo of insects, driving other flies, midges, and even mosquitos (which local fish and larval predators have evolved with) to exinction. Treat them like the infection they are.
I remember when it was announced that smallpox was eradicated (Yeah, I'm old enough to have a smallpox vaccination scar).
I remember someone moaning about how we had driven a species to extinction.
We're a funny lot, really. I've learned not to take us too seriously; especially the folks that take themselves very seriously.
It is questionable whether smallpox is alive and so whether it can go extinct. If in some sense it can go extinct it seems both the Americans and Russians are determined to keep it alive "just in case".
Nobody was much concerned when we eradicated another infectious virus. Unlike Smallpox there was no "military rationale" for keeping copies on ice, so Rinderpest is gone. It appears that its close human relation, Measles, will be around for a long time though because "I don't believe in facts" trumps "My child has died of a preventable disease". So that's certainly evidence for you're "We're a funny lot" theory.
A fairly common horror movie trope, is some Eocene zombiemaker virus, being thawed out of the permafrost.
I've heard talk about getting rid of a few species of mosquitoes; eliminating all would be an ecological catastrophe. They are pollinators and an essential food source for many species, like birds, bats, and frogs.
The interesting version of this is to exterminate the malaria carrying mosquito species. Only 40 of 3500 species can carry malaria. If we wipe them out, non malaria carrying species will likely take their place in the ecosystems.
250 million people have malaria, and 600k, mostly children die from it yearly.
And yet, I see a lot more people defending the mosquitos than the humans.
You seem very well-informed on the matter.