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Extinctions happen all the time without us even noticing. There are an estimated 2.6 to 7.8 million species of insects. Losing a hundred of them would make only a tiny ripple in the ecosystem. After all, over 99 percent of species that have ever existed have gone extinct. Mosquitoes do provide food for other creatures, but whatever ended up taking over the ecological niche of the departed bloodsuckers would probably also play a role in the food chain. If we are worried about the loss of diversity, we could eliminate the human-biting mosquitoes and spend a few million dollars helping, say, endangered beetles.
Sure, there are unknown unknowns with eliminating some mosquitoes. The ecosystem involves complex interdependencies and exterminating a few insect species could have unforeseeable negative consequences. But the unknown unknowns of keeping the mosquitoes are probably even worse. Who knows what new diseases human-biting mosquitoes might bring, especially if climate change expands their numbers or causes them to pick up additional parasites.
Just in case, we could keep some lab samples of the exterminated insects and release them back into the environment if we come to think they were beneficial. I think, however, that this is about as likely as us wanting to reintroduce smallpox into our population.
We could eliminate these mosquitoes would be using gene editing to release loads of very attractive mosquitoes, that produce very attractive male offspring. These mosquitoes would be edited to only produce males, thus each generation would have less females until there are none left, and thus mosquitoes would be extinct.
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The Gates Foundation is reportedly looking into ways of using gene drives to destroy some mosquito species. The biggest barrier, however, might be political. The Foundation supposedly hired a PR firm to try to convince academics and UN decision makers to be more favorably disposed to deploying gene drives.
