WI: No Mosquitoes

MNP

I was born and raised in Minnesota. Vast amounts of mosquitoes are natural to me. I am also more tasty than the average person. So when I came across this article the idea struck me like a thunderbolt.

The money quote behind the piece:

"They [mosquitoes] don't occupy an unassailable niche in the environment," says entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Florida. "If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over."
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So let's hear it! No mosquitoes! Assume mosquitoes die out say sometime in the last glacial period. While a number of the comments to the article sound cautionary notes (or ugly ones) assume the premise of the article: a minor ecological hiccup.

How do human societies develop in the absence of the mosquito but everything else remains the same?
 

Admiral Brown

MNP said:
I was born and raised in Minnesota. Vast amounts of mosquitoes are natural to me. I am also more tasty than the average person. So when I came across this article the idea struck me like a thunderbolt.

The money quote behind the piece:

So let's hear it! No mosquitoes! Assume mosquitoes die out say sometime in the last glacial period. While a number of the comments to the article sound cautionary notes (or ugly ones) assume the premise of the article: a minor ecological hiccup.

How do human societies develop in the absence of the mosquito but everything else remains the same?
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Well, if there are no mosquitos, there's no malaria, which may mean that Southern Italy and large parts of Africa are much better of than IOTL
 

Just Leo

This is one instance where handwavium actually works. I was watching bats flying around, thankful that they eat mosquitoes, but dubious in the knowledge that they don't eat all of them. But what is the solution? Time travel back to the time of the first mating pair, and swatting the little buggers?
 

MNP

Admiral Brown said:
Well, if there are no mosquitos, there's no malaria, which may mean that Southern Italy and large parts of Africa are much better of than IOTL
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This may also butterfly racial slavery. A huge part of the reason Africans were in demand in the new world is that once the Old World diseases came over, Africans having to deal with them more than the other peoples (Maghrebi, S. Euros, N. Euros, Natives in ascending order of vulnerability). Without stuff like mosquitoes it's going to make it less urgent to use Sub-Saharan Africans as workers and that's going to reduce black slave trade since it's now more possible to use other Old World groups (who died quicker IOTL).

Also note, mosquitoes go back at least 80,000,000 YBP so I'm not comfortable with making them go "poof" that far back. Which is why I suggested they go extinct sometime during the last glaciation period (before 12,000 BC) that way we know humanity is around and pretty spread out.
 

karl2025

If there are no mosquitoes, plants are going to be in big trouble since mosquitoes are rather active pollinators. Dragonflies are going to be in big trouble too since they feed on the mosquito larvae and birds will hurt since they eat both mosquitoes and dragonflies. Fish which feed on the larvae will instead focus on other insects and tadpoles, so frogs are going to hurt from it too.
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
karl2025 said:
If there are no mosquitoes, plants are going to be in big trouble since mosquitoes are rather active pollinators. Dragonflies are going to be in big trouble too since they feed on the mosquito larvae and birds will hurt since they eat both mosquitoes and dragonflies. Fish which feed on the larvae will instead focus on other insects and tadpoles, so frogs are going to hurt from it too.
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Shit. I was hoping they were just demonic blood-suckers that were useless to the ecosystem. Can we make them drink the blood of some other creature we don't like instead of us, then? Maybe dolphins.
 

MNP

karl2025 said:
If there are no mosquitoes, plants are going to be in big trouble since mosquitoes are rather active pollinators. Dragonflies are going to be in big trouble too since they feed on the mosquito larvae and birds will hurt since they eat both mosquitoes and dragonflies. Fish which feed on the larvae will instead focus on other insects and tadpoles, so frogs are going to hurt from it too.
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You need to re-read my first post. I specifically stated that we should assume the facts the article, that it remains a tiny ecological hiccup.

In the article it says that mosquito eating birds will be switching to other insects, bats eat less than 2% mosquitoes and Dragonflies eat a lot of things they find. They will hunt ants or termites, gnats, mayflies, etc. They will simply eat other bugs, bugs that with no mosquitoes, will have new niches to fill. The article itself states that while it would reduce some diversity in some plants, as whole they are not a key pollinator. So too in fish, other insects would take over likes midges but there would be far more of these other insects to fill the blank space that mosquitoes leave behind so it wouldn't be that detrimental.

So rather than question the premise (which you are welcome to do but doesn't seem very useful in this context) let's go with it.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Your biggest problem is that 'extinction in the last ice ages' would likely happen only in places where there WAS an ice age (assuming, especially that you meant the ice age had something to do with it). In other words, Africa, most of Asia and the Amazon wouldn't be touched.

Moreover, HOW do you manage to exterminate such a group? They are an entire family of insects (Cuculidae) and apparently there are 3500 species.

I could see some virus, say, wiping out all Anopheles, say, but there are bucket loads of other genera...
 

Admiral Matt

Yellow Fever, too.

It does need emphasizing, though that it's very much not as simple as "they die out." Given their omnipresence from the Arctic to the rain forest, it's safe to say that only extraordinary circumstances would harm the Family. Given that we don't want to deal with an extinction level event, and mean to wipe them out in the recent past when they were widely established, there are very few options.

A disease might be the most likely, but would depend on mosquitoes sharing food sources (many target a subset of all warm-blooded creatures). All in all, it strikes me as very unlikely to happen without disrupting events by occurring in the far-distant past. If it happens more recently.... there needs to be a very good reason, one I can not see.
 

Clovis

Africa would probably be in better shape, the Plague might be a bit worse, assuming it isn't butterflied away.

Actually, killing them off during the Little Ice Age by some godsend would make for an interesting concept.

Huzzah for Minnesota, btw.
 
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