The small section of mosquitoes that bite humans actually don’t serve a critical niche like that, and just spread disease. Why the idea has been floated at sterilizing them.
OK, but all the ticks can go die in a fire
How about they all die in a chicken tummy
If humans went extinct, the planet gets better?
There would be no one left to value it as such. It would simply continue to exist.
So yes. Better. Please excuse my colleague, they have ass burgers
Tremendously! We’re like a tumour
Open Ecofacism in the comments, what have we come to.
Let’s hear it, what group of people are you suggesting we “excise”, brown shirt?
Don’t be weird
Nothing evolves to have a purpose, something just mutated by chance that happens to serve a beneficial function to the environment and other organisms
Also I’m pretty sure birds, bats and plants can eat other bugs
What’s the statistics on bug food for birds and plants ?
Statistics on bug food??? For birds and plants??? Do you want the whole thing dumped here in the comments? Or do you mean “do birds eat insects”? Yes. A lot.
Diets are highly species specific, but mosquitos are generally less than 3% of the diet for most birds and bats. Too small, don’t fly around at the correct time of day/night, and pretty agile, so they aren’t supper important for most birds and bats.
Also, usually they hatch in the billions all at once and die within a few weeks so there’s a very limited amount of time that they even can be preyed on as food. Their strategy (many of them, not all species) is to overwhelm any predators with numbers.
I thought some of the specific mosquitoes that prey on humans can be killed with little side effects. Or is that just my cognitive bias dreaming of a better world
Species do not exist for a purpose. They are important in their ecosystem, that’s all.
And even if they don’t have a role, that doesn’t make their existence any less valuable.
If screworms went extinct there wouldn’t be any animals starving… same with a lot of pests. guinea worm for example.
We are the only species out of the ecologic system, we need the nature, but the nature don’t need us.
How do you define “wasp” though? All Hymenoptera? All Apocrita? All Apocrita minus Apoidea and/or Formicidae? All Vespoidea (minus Formicidae?)? Only Vespidae?
What about all the parasitic wasps? All fig trees would die and with them whole food webs. And if all the parasitic wasps that hold other organisms in check would die, this would also lead to a total disruption of so many biomes…
If humans went extinct the planet would find balance.
‘Balance’ is a human concept. The planet will get by fine. The only relevant question is whether humans will.
Balance is absolutely not a human concept.
‘Balance’ in the meaning you intend is absolutely a human concept. Life doesn’t give a F about ‘balance’, it just adjusts to the current situation. Conditions change? A few species here and there go extinct, and new ones appear to fill the space. It’s humans who have come up with the concept of ‘balance’. And we’re not wrong! If we want to avoid going extinct, we need to not throw the environment totally out of whack like it’s going right now. But if we mess it up? ‘Balance’ goes out the window, humanity goes extinct, and life on Earth goes on without us. ‘Balance’ matters to nobody but humans.
Life doesn’t give an F about balance
you speak with the confident wrongness of someone who has no scientific understanding of natural cycles, equilibriiums, self-limiting reproductive rates, ecology, or biology. have you heard of chemistry? equilibriums?
you are confusing a linguistic object , the word “balance” (like from an Oxford dictionary) with empirically observable, falsifiable hypotheses which are well established in environmental science. humans are late arrivals to the millennia of life systems on earth, and the first thing they did was begin destroying balanced ecosystems to grow surplus foods, exert population pressures on other species, reshape rivers and lakes, clearcut forests, and general terraform the shit out of everything, other creatures be damned.
your comment suggests a stunningly anthropocentric hubris and a total ignorance to eons of geological time preceding homo sapiens which humans came along and completely fucked by rapidly terra forming the planet. go tell a black rhino or a dodo that only humans care about balance.
humans cause imbalance in nature, it’s literally our whole thing we do. transform the environment by whatever means possible, dominate other life forms to extinction if we feel like it, overcome natural limits or push others to extreme boundaries.
You’re both using different definitions of that word. But also, you’re anthropomorphizing the biosphere, which seems to be what the other person is mainly talking about. Yeah, it obviously is affected by human activity, but to say that it “cares” doesn’t make sense for an idea like the entire biosphere.
Great, you missed my entire point.
me missing your point doesn’t make your arguments correct. you are factually mistaken in your framing.
Yeah, no. Fuck off with your condescending bullshit. I’m not getting into a discussion with somebody who opens with insults and can’t remain civil.
Not for a while
When the COVID shutdown happened nature started returning to industrialized and commerce stained areas in a matter of weeks.
Started
Until we are forced to replace them with technological bandaids and hope the ecosystem keeps churning. Like we’ve been doing for a couple centuries atleast.
I probably don’t care about those plants or anything they depend on.
At least not enough to think mosquitoes are worth it.
I couldn’t give less of a fuck about roaches, they ain’t bother me, I ain’t bother them. But mosquitoes? Purpose of no purpose, fuck them right to hell.
Some plants would go extinct?
I feel like that’s a sacrifice I might be willing to make.
Majority of the wasp species did not bother human nor want to be close to human. It’s human that want them dead while entering their territory.
Those bitches fly into my house, that’s their territory? Where’s my territory? Ethiopia?
You need to pee on the perimeter of the house, inside and out, to mark your territory.
Few species being especially bad tempered and highly territorial and tend to build a huge nest and you want the whole species all extinct? Who are you? 18th century British?
i am under the impression that mosquitos, as an invasive species, do not fill an important ecological niche and could go extinct and be replaced by other insects
I think that’s true for the Aedes egypti species at least, they’re not native in the Americas and are a main disease-spreading species
Invasive where? They can’t be invasive in general
They’re invasive of the PLANET
I think in Lilo and Stitch the aliens mention in passing that they use Earth as a wildlife preserve for mosquitoes.
Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are invasive in all of North and South America
They’re invading my personal space
My back patio, the little shits
Many of the most common species of mosquitos in america are invasive
This has been a common sentiment but it hasn’t been proven in any substantial way to my knowledge. I personally doubt it’s accurate. That’s not to say the entire ecosystem would collapse but there would likely be consequences.
That said, the other commenter is correct that there are many introduced mosquito species that could probably be eradicated from their non-native range without major ecological harm. And the species that are the worst pests in human cities tend to be introduced, so eliminating them might significantly reduce the level of bites and disease transmission for people.
Mosquitos are a nuisance to every mammal, I think if we could talk to animals this is how it would go down
Human: “So anyways we’ve been mulling over making the mosquito extinct, but it might have some consequences for yo…”
Mammals: “WTF BRO YOU COULD HAVE DONE THAT THE ENTIRE TIME! WHY TF ARE YOU STILL HERE GET RID OF THOSE FUCKERS!”
TBF humans historically have been pretty lax in doing anything simply because it was a good thing to do
Yeah I mean the ethics of how humans relate to wild mammals are so complicated and confusing that I’m not even going to go there.
Ok but I still think the mosquito thing is worth a try. I’m even willing to live alongside wasps but mosquitoes gotta go!
The mosquito thing is known to be false, and people only ever talk about extinguishing half a dozen species of them at most, that are invasive on most parts.
Half a dozen out of 6k+ lmao
I’m willing to pump up other insects to get rid of mosquitoes
Then do what you can to promote dragonflies.
(Don’t know how to better link this old comment.)
https://photon.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/19193004?thread=0.12060765.12088433
tl;dr: Just read it.
Can I be an insect?
…🥺
👉👈::bonk::
We’ll pump you full of larvae
I’m prepping my ovipositors as we speak
