Superstorm Sandy raises issues as to climatic change, but also to the threats a warmer climate may bring in the aftermath of great downpours. This time, thank goodness, the autumnal temperatures will leave mosquitoes mostly dormant, and people cold but relatively safe from mosquito-bearing disease.
It is the female that will annoyingly hum around your ears at night. It is the only song she knows and she does it so that males-who do not hum, just listen-can locate her. And of course it is the female that causes us to continually slap our own faces on warm summer evenings, especially when the air is muggy, ideally between 15°C (59°F) and 30°C (86°F). She needs to gorge herself with nutrients found in the blood of vertebrates (birds, amphibians, us and other mammals) to be able to bring her eggs to maturation.
To prevent the blood from clotting in the process she injects an anticoagulant substance via her saliva. It is this substance that causes an allergic reaction that leads to those ungracious itchy lumps on your forehead, arms and legs as well as other unmentionable places. And in this way she transmits disease.
So What Use Are Mosquitoes?
1. A Regulator. It is precisely her ability to spread disease that makes her capital to nature's self-regulating system. She plays a major part in reducing the populations of many species, especially that single most prolific one of them all. I mean, man, of course. In fact, Centers for Disease Control estimate that mosquito-borne diseases kill something like 2 million people a year, which is very sad for those who fall victim to them but there are ways of reducing their presence and so people's exposure to disease.
2. A Gatekeeper. Right up till the last century mosquitoes were part of nature's defense strategy against human aggression. For thousands of years they successfully acted as a deterrent from invasion of tropical areas like the Amazonian forest where their presence kept human intrusion and destruction at bay. They were the gatekeepers of sacred lands. Then man invented pesticides and in doing so has become guilty of gradually destroying the medicine cabinet of future generations, and perhaps sowing the seeds of his own demise.
3. A Food Source. Mosquitoes constitute an important source of food for many aquatic birds, amphibians, fish and insects in water where they live before becoming adults. If they were no longer allowed to breed a pond would be pretty much like a broth without the tasty bits! And, as adults, they constitute an abundant food source for birds, dragonflies and other creatures. Getting rid of mosquitoes would be like getting rid of plankton in the ocean, it would leave a huge gap in the food chain.
4. A Pollinator. Between bloodthirsty forays females will do as males do and settle on a flower and sup up honeydew and nectar, their staple diet. This of course helps towards pollination.
Would We Gain From Life Without Mosquitoes?
True, mosquitoes create discomfort and transmit disease, but let's be fair, though they rank high on the world's mass killer list, they are certainly no more harmful to people or to the environment than humans themselves. In fact modern man is the most destructive single living species on earth. Life without mosquitoes might be something we all wish for sometimes, but if we got rid of them to the point of extinction then the world might well become a hungrier, more ravaged, and less flowered place.
Paul C.R. Monk
Influenced by the works of French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre, Paul has been an enthusiast of entomology for many years. He is also a fiction writer, his forthcoming book is about a boy who undergoes a strange metamorphosis.
Visit his website at the above link for more features about bugs and the book.
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