Image ID: a picture of a newspaper article that reads;
“As a biologist, I have been asked by many, many people; “why do we need mosquitos?” and “Why can’t we just kill all the ticks?”. People may argue that they serve no purpose in the ecosystem, and nothing would really be affected if we got rid of them. After all, these animals are just nuisances, right? Everything would be better off if there were no parasites to bother them.
This is, of course, an untrue claim. Parasites play many roles in the ecosystem and their presence is absolutely necessary. For instance, let’s look at mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes are remarkable animals. There are many thousands of species, and only a few drink blood. Mosquitoes of all species subsist primarily on nectar, just like bees. This makes them critical pollinators. Of the few species that drink blood, only the females are interested in doing so, and they only do so to secure vital proteins for incubating their eggs. The males will continue to only feed on nectar for their whole lives.
But, besides being pollinators, what makes mosquitoes really incredible is their larvae. These larvae are aquatic and capable of surviving in extremely hostile conditions and in very small volumes of water. A mosquito will happily lay her eggs in an otherwise barren muddy puddle, and thousands of babies will thrive there, filter-feeding on microscopic organisms. This, in turn, provides food for other animals. Other aquatic insects as well as larval amphibians subsist largely on mosquitoes. Some insects will seek to lay their eggs in areas that mosquito eggs or larvae already exist, because it is a guaranteed food source.
This sudden abundance of life will attract predators of those animals, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, an entire thriving ecosystem has sprung up around this muddy puddle that otherwise would have supported little to no life, all thanks to these hardy larvae. In this way, mosquitoes are the foundation of many food-webs and allow life to colonize new, formerly inhospitable places.
However, defending the ecological importance of any animal is ultimately an exhausting task for biologists. The idea that animals must serve a purpose, must benefit humans in some way, is a fundamentally flawed way to view the natural world.
Every living organism that exists is a result of billions of years of evolution, all interwoven in a delicate balance with each other. If any of these pieces are removed, things will begin to collapse around it. We cannot sort animals into the categories of “useful” or “not useful”, because animals do not exist to be useful to us. They all have a place in the world, and we don’t get to pick and choose which species deserve to live without sending catastrophic ripple effects throughout the surrounding web of the ecosystem.
Whether we like it or not, parasites are part of the world and we have to coexist with them. Our focus should be on prevention of diseases associated with these parasites, by deterring them from biting, vaccinations against the bacteria they may carry, and affordable treatment if infections do occur, rather than figuring out a way to remove them from the planet entirely. Nothing in an ecosystem exists in isolation. Everything is deeply interwoven, and every species is necessary. The moment we allow ourselves to debate which species could be driven to extinction without consequence is the moment we will begin unravel the world around us, and, ultimately, humans will feel those ripples too.”
There is a picture of a mosquito in the bottom corner. End ID.
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