On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 09:45:18AM -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
At 07:04 PM 5/7/03 -0700, Mike Rosing wrote:
A world without mosquitoes would be pretty bleak given how many other things eat them. Better to wipe out the malaria and swat the mosquitos!
Still, you're in the minority. If one could kill all the blood-biting mosquitoes without killing other bugs, birds, 'gators, etc it would be a good thing.
*delurking for the first time* I think that this is the whole point. It's impossible to tell what effect removing a species from an ecosystem will have due to the phenomenal complexity of the system. Just removing the mosquito _appears_ to have very little effect, but the wider ramifications of such an action could be disastrous. It may well be that the desire to preserve the mosquito is in the minority, but amongst those who actually understand the possible implications I would suspect that there is a different viewpoint. H -- "He who controls the past controls the future; | We are at war with Iraq, he who controls the present controls the past." | We have always been at war -- O'Brien in Orwell's "1984" | with Iraq.