No One Knows Exactly What Would Happen If Mosquitoes Were to Disappear
A four-year experiment sets out to study the ecological consequences of a bold scheme to end malaria.
When Delphine Thizy talks to people about eliminating malaria by targeting mosquitos, the one question she says everyone asks—“whether you’re talking to someone in a village in Africa who has never studied biology or an ecologist or a UN ambassador”—is this: What are the consequences?
It’s a good question. To humans, mosquitoes are at best annoying and at worst deadly, but to dozens of other species in the wild, they are competitor, pollinator, or prey. If past malaria-eradication campaigns have taught us), it is that reshaping the environment can have .
