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How Do Mosquitoes Help Our Planet?

Mosquitoes are two-winged, fly-like insects infamous for their bloodsucking habits. Although only a couple hundred out of the 3,500 known species feed on people, some of the species that do share a taste for human blood can transmit some nasty diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Even disease-free mosquitoes give their victims an itchy bite. There isn't much to like about mosquitoes, but they do play a few beneficial roles in natural ecosystems.

Tundra
- For a short time after the snowmelt, mosquitoes are more abundant in the Arctic tundra than in almost any other place on Earth. Each animal in a herd of caribou can end up donating as much as 10 oz. of blood per day to the bloodsuckers, who in turn often become food for migratory birds. According to an article in Nature News, some scientists believe that removing the entire mosquito population from the tundra ecosystem could reduce the numbers of migratory birds nesting there by as much as 50 percent.
Nutrients
- Not many other ecosystems feature such a startling abundance of mosquitoes. Nonetheless, both in the tundra and elsewhere, mosquitoes take nutrients from one group of organisms in an ecosystem and make them available to another. Migratory birds ordinarily wouldn't be able to derive any nourishment from the caribou. The mosquitoes, however, enable the birds to indirectly derive food from the caribou because the female mosquitoes drink caribou blood and in turn, become food for the birds. Mosquitoes also serve as food for other animals like bats, spiders and dragonflies.
Fish
- Another important example of this kind of nutrient transport involves fish in lakes. Many fish feed on mosquito larvae. The female mosquito obtains much of the energy it needs to produce its eggs from the blood of its host, so here too the mosquitoes are essentially shuttling energy and nutrients from land animals to the aquatic ecosystem. Some species of fish have specialized to feed on mosquitoes and/or their larvae and might be in trouble if mosquitoes disappeared entirely. The mosquitofish, for example, depends heavily on mosquitoes.
Considerations
- According to an article in Nature News, many scientists believe the world wouldn't miss much if mosquitoes disappeared, despite their role as food for predators in various ecosystems. Bats and birds that feed on mosquitoes, for example, also eat a variety of other insects. While the loss of the mosquitoes might be a problem in some areas, especially the Arctic tundra, it wouldn't be a devastating one. Nonetheless, mosquitoes are abundant and widespread enough that it would be difficult to eradicate them, so the question of their importance may be a purely theoretical one.

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