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A Purdue researcher and a team of scientists working on a new insecticide argue that mosquitoes should not simply be made extinct due to their role in various ecosystems. Catherine Hill, a professor of entomology, and her team are developing an insecticide that will suppress mosquitoes' ability to transmit diseases without killing the insect or interfering with other life forms. The team is based in Discovery Park, a research park dedicated to using interdisciplinary teams to solve global problems. Hill's research was one of the winners of Discovery Park's Big Idea Challenge, a program that provides resources to interdisciplinary teams with innovative research.
"For the last 20 years I've been trying to figure out how to kill mosquitoes, and then I had this epiphany where, morally, I'm just not OK with it anymore," she said.
There has been a lack of research in preserving mosquitoes because researchers have looked mostly at ways to eradicate them. Therefore, Hill thinks it is essential to consider all the possible effects of wiping out an organism that has existed for thousands of years. She points out that mosquitoes have co-evolved with many species, so there are likely other organisms that depend on them as a food source.
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-mosquitoes.html
[Source]: Why mosquitoes should not be eliminated
I was reminded of:
Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room. - Christine Todd Whitman
Should there be a "Save the Mosquito" movement?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:06PM (5 children)
You city dwellers keep thinking mosquitoes are cute, but we killed them for a damn good reason. They cause harm, both directly to humans and indirectly by killing our livestock.
We even burned all the forest off of Mount Monadnock just to wipe out a mosquito swarm. The mountain is still bald 2 centuries later.
At this point, reintroducing the mosquito is like introducing an invasive species. One might as well release lions and tigers and hippos and tse-tse flies and bot flies and the guinea worm. Heck, go for smallpox too!
People who support mosquitoes are a special kind of traitor. It's not really against a country. It's against humanity itself. We tamed the wilderness so we could live safely, and some people want to undo that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:46PM (1 child)
You sure did show those mosquitoes, huh? Lucky none of them could fly and get away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:21AM
Whatever you bunch did, enough of it worked that you aren't dying of malaria the way they are in Africa. Or dengue. Or other mosquito borne diseases (there are probably a number which are "unknown" because not enough whites have died from them yet).
Malaria was such a significant problem that stuff like thallasemia and sickle cell anemia evolved. Other stuff too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_resistance_to_malaria [wikipedia.org]
I'll be happy if all the blood sucking mosquitoes were wiped out. Don't care about the animals or plants that can't survive without such mosquitoes. If they are that dependent on blood sucking mosquitoes they deserve to go extinct along with them.
There's some scientific evidence that most if not all of the insectivores that do eat mosquitoes will survive. In many cases mosquitoes don't make up that much of their diet.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @12:39AM
Originally, I made the above post about wolves. We even did torch a whole mountain to get rid of the vile beasts.
Aside from the mountain though, the post is quite accurate for mosquitoes.
BTW, Jimmy Carter is trying to make the guinea worm extinct. Anybody want to provide habitat for it?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 12 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
Indeed. Mosquitoes kill more humans than any other animal does (except perhaps other humans).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:40AM
Not accurate. Mosquitoes don't kill humans. The diseases that some of them carry do. Saying mosquitoes kill humans is even less accurate than saying humans kill humans whenever humans catch flu from each other and die. Because in the latter cases there's more chance of mens rea in some cases (e.g. someone has a bad flu and intentionally tries to pass it someone to hopefully kill them).
That said, I'm OK with culling chickens/pigs/mosquitoes to prevent/control disease outbreaks.
To me blood-sucking mosquitoes are acceptable collateral damage in our war against the many mosquito-borne diseases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito-borne_disease [wikipedia.org]
Even extinction is acceptable to me.