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▲ vlod 3 hours ago

Isn't there a knock on effect of removing them?

Does anything eat them as food? Wouldn't it be environmentally damaging to remove a source of food for X?

▲GuB-42 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mosquitoes control human populations, an invasive species. Removing mosquitoes will make humans proliferate, which is known to be environmentally damaging.

Joking aside, the consensus seems to be that the effect of removing disease-carrying mosquitoes (not all mosquitoes) from the environment is minor compared to how many lives it can save.

▲lefra 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In places where it's been living for hundreds of years, that's a legitimate concern.

In Europe though, where aedes aegypti didn't exist 20 years ago, it's probably the other way around: what did the introduction of this new species damage? (apart from making the summer unbearable outside if any of your neighbour isn't very strict with standing water elimination)

▲pigpop 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aedes aegypti is an invasive species native to Africa so removing it from the environment everywhere else in the world that it has been spread to would benefit the local mosquito species which don't spread the same diseases and are less of a nuisance to humans.

▲Tagbert 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are still a lot of other mosquito species. removing just the few that carry human disease will not have a major impact on creatures that eat mosquitoes.

▲estearum 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The mere existence of other things that we call mosquitos does not mean they are all interchangeable as a food source for the animals that eat them.

Is your level of knowledge on this just "there are other things called mosquitos ergo it's not a problem," or do you have deeper affirmative knowledge that the animals that eat these mosquitos also eat those other mosquitos, and that those other mosquitos can increase their population to replace the lost food source?

▲fckgw 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Lots of animals eat mosquitos, but they really aren't the primary food source of any species, especially this particular type of mosquito. It would have a very minimal effect on food supply.

▲MisterMunchkin 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There isn’t, but why would I care?

A billion human lives, or some sad trout who have to eat fruit flies instead. For me, it’s an obvious choice.

I just can’t understand the level of smugness it must take to insist that we must force another billion people to die of horrible diseases like malaria, because you want the moral high ground. How do you even tell yourself that killing all those people is the moral high ground?

▲larsiusprime 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe the argument is the dominant mosquito species are themselves invasive to the continent

▲estearum 2 hours ago | parent [-]

"Invasive" is a made up human concept. The question is whether there are species that now rely on these as a food source. The entire natural world is a hodge-podge of "invasive" species coming from some nearby land, disrupting the ecosystem, then the ecosystem evolving around it – typically a gradual process over thousands of years.

If it took a couple hundred years for this species to proliferate, it's absolutely plausible that eradicating it in a few years will have surprising second- and third-order effects.

▲Tuna-Fish 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are many mosquito species in competition for the same resources, only a few (iirc 10% in the US) of which sting humans and carry diseases. Wiping out the ones that attack people would allow other mosquitoes to take over the ecological niches.

▲andai 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The swallows love mosquitoes. When I get bit by mosquitoes I often joke I am feeding the birds.

▲vel0city 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the ratio of frogs lives to human children spared from disease that's acceptable to you, assuming we had a clear answer?

If 20,000 humans weren't significantly harmed from disease because of this release, but 70,000 frogs faced starvation, which would you choose?

▲vlod 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I was suggesting that it's rarely that simple.

If we lose those frogs, it most likely would cause a cascade across other species. There are lots of things that eat frogs.

▲BurningFrog 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not a fan of "you never know" arguments.

They're only applied to thing we don't want to do.

In reality, it's always true that we don't fully know, so applying the argument always means "let's not do this".

▲vel0city an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I totally understand there's a massive amount of unknowns about this. Let's continue analyzing what's the right course of action as we go, and ensure we're taking that understanding into account of what we do in the future.

In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.