Beetles

No that is just wishing for order where there is none. Lots of species disappeared before man. If you studied evolution you would understand that. Wiping out the mosquito is likely much less environmentally hazardous than plowing up the great planes grass land and over hunting buffalo. We can tell that decreasing, then increasing wolf population changed evolutionary pressure.
Reintroducing Wolves to Yellowstone & Idaho: The 20th Anniversary

Here is a paper about disiese and invasive
mosquitoes
Ecology of invasive mosquitoes: effects on resident species and on human health
You can see that invasive moquitoes were partially responsible for the yellow fever outbreaks in the americas. I guess you consider these early invaders part of the ecosystem now, so peace, love, and happiness to protect them, and more recent invaders. Still the drive to wipe out some species is outside the US where they are more prone to carry desieses that are more controlled here.

As opposed to the namby pamby way you are thinking that wiping out some species of mosquitos that migrate and increase in population because of anprogenic influences of man are "bad".

Of course things ate them, and their devouring other food sources kept large mammal populations down. They probably wiped out some speicies food sources during drought and caused those spieces to go extinct. Decomosed bodies probably fertilized the soil. I know in your world that is all for the better as it opened up a niche for other speicies, but from a human centric point of view, well it doesn't seem like we are worse off. now them wolves, and buffalo those are big changes and bad on man, but the accidental extinction of a pest, hey I'm all for it.

I am saying this is a narrow and fairly obtuse view point. Does man continue to drop ddt in Africa? Is that better for the environment. Irrigation is not natural, should we stop irrigating crops? Or should we say, screw it, we have this tool to protect humans and animals from denge, maleria, yellow fever and we can use it to wipe out some mosquito species, or we can continue to drain swamps, use heavy pesticides, and spend billions on healthcare for the desieses.

It is not natural for so many humans to live on the planet, but I would rather wipe out some mosquito species than decide people in africa should die. I know its selfish of me as a species of favoring humans over mosquitoes, but .... there you go.

Nope not even in the ball park of what I am saying.

There are certain pests that spread disease, that man has made more powerful in the changing environment that I would like to reduce in population. That should be easy to understand. These do not include wolves, or lepards, or other preditors where populations were killed to protect livestock, but a clear niche was fufilled in the eco system.

 

I'll have to disagree with you here about natural. Man is a part of nature. Unless you believe there is something supernatural about US then the natural numbers are what they are. Now this large number of humans like large numbers of anything put a great stress on the environment, and perhaps this stress would be lower with oil and coal taxes, but clearly it would be worse if we were still using whales and trees for our fuel.

Now if you listened to malthus we could not have made it to this point without a massive death rate, so something must be wrong with his and the neo meathusian arithmetic. Each human today needs a lot less space than they did in 1800, and if we peak at 11 billion instead of 1 Billion we might be less destructive to the planet than when we had 1 billion people.

yep, and unforturnately man has done a poor job in the past with introduction of non-native species. That does not mean we should not praise the dung beetle, but it doesn't mean we should like cane toads or mosquitoes

I know a crazy cat lady that resuces and spays or neuters them. I've been on a feral hog and a nutria hunt.

I'm glad you join me in mosquito hate.

 

maybe hydro electric and wind. The big brain was an evolutionary adaptation, that enabled the use of high technology, which allows us to solve problems in innovative ways. Malthus calculations could not foresee that. England was using a great deal of coal when he wrote his arithmetic. Technology allowed the british to dig deeper and not run out as quickly as malthus probably thought, but the big one was the haber process to use fossil fuel to make fertilizer.

Its a philosophical question. We have had mega epidemics. One of the most famous is bubonic plague, but we have had typhoid, and small pox, and yellow fever. Our big brains now have allowed us to adapt with medicines and vacines, but ... are our big brains natural.

When a bird or a monkey uses a tool is it natural. I say it is, but that is philosophy.

agree here. Do you get southpark in china? They had an excellent episode on it.
+1

 

Well, I'm pretty much talking Dogs, Cats...Pets. Pets. Tough to lose one or be the cause of somebody else losing one because you buried Anti-Freeze in a too accessible container.

 

Infected women are 'nicer' on some personality tests.
Makes sense if the parasite can get rats thinking it's alright to walk up to cats.

If they are pets, they shouldn't be outside unsupervised, or be safely contained by a good fence.
But a backyard could be frequently visited by natives, like possums, raccoons, foxes, and skunks that may take a taste of the antifreeze.

Introduced species are nearly always bad. Yes, the dung beetles fixed a problem that was caused by introduced cattle. If predatory or parasitic wasps are used to control fire ants in North America, that would also be a good thing. But the ants were accidentally introduced themselves.

 

Ah was thinking southpark on the web, but probably blocked. Yes the malthus stuff has more to do with evolutionary biology, and if humans can or should use gmo techniques to wipe out disease carrying species of mosquitoes that have evolved to smell humans and carry pathogens A topic for a different board entirely not environmental discussion.

What is it 22% of suspected species are beetles and less than 1% vertebrates. Cockroaches and termites are Blattodea and only have around 6000 species identified. I really hadn't thought about all the different kinds of bugs I don't hate are beetles.

 

Certainly, ideally.
But if you've ever had an Outdoor/Indoor cat? Nearly impossible.
And even well cared for Dogs can run off.

Since we are talking a simple "home experiment" in collecting bugs? Why take the risk and bury Anti-Freeze?
I'm using Mineral Oil.
Worst case scenario there? I give my neighbors cat or dog the runs. But they don't go into convulsions and die.

 

Some of those butt based beetle defense are actually explosive.

 

I've been accused of .....being one of those beetles....

 

So that makes it ok? The planet has nearly become lifeless before man as well. Why would you want to repeat the experiment? If you studied evolution you would understand this.

Wow, nice false dichotomy. What *level of risk* are you willing to take that wiping out some mosquito species won't be deciding that ALL people everywhere should die? Have you even begun to figure out what that risk is, or are you deciding the fate of all humans based on your ignorant assumption?

 

am i wrong to step on ants? there appear to be too many.

 

the asian long horned beetle has devastated some of our forests over the past few years. and made transporting firewood a problem.

 

I don't know of when the planet became nearly lifeless, and can't fathom that wiping out disease carrying spiecies of mosquitos, instead of dropping massive amounts of pesticides on the earth would cause that. Perhaps a diagram of how pesticides good, mosquitos good would do it for me.

btw: recent research says man has accidentally or on purpose caused 322 species to go extinct in the last 500 years. I don't think any research has said the loss of the rocky mountain locust was disasterous. Perhaps you can point to that. Many of those other spiecies will be missed. I guess what my question is? Do you think those pesticides and drugs dealing with mosquitos are better than trying to wipe them out? I guess you do. Do you fight as hard for the other endangered spiecies?

Talk about dramatic. I guess your vote is for malaria, ddt, and mosquitos! Or maybe just dengue, yellow fever, malaria and mosquitos but no ddt. But how do you get all those countries to not spray ddt when the world health organization endorses it?
Should DDT Be Used to Combat Malaria? - Scientific American

What if invasive spiecies of mosquitos carry the next plague?

I disagree with your vote, but I understand it ;-)
Peace

I would never call you out for that.

But don't step on the beetles.

 

it's a fine line. i think there are less june bugs and fireflies than when i was a kid.

 

There are probably ant impersonating beetles out there.