Holocausto mosquitero:

Have you ever noticed this gigantic mosquito at the Museum?

This isn’t a specimen of some monstrously-sized insect, but instead a scaled-up model of the tiny Anopheles maculipennis. This mosquito model is enlarged 47 times and debuted at the Museum in 1917 as part of an effort to educate the public about mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and yellow fever.

Of the more than 3,500 species of mosquito known to science, the Anopheles mosquito is among a small handful responsible for malaria transmission in humans. While only females bite and transmit disease to humans, this model is a male.

At the time, it was a somewhat controversial idea that the mosquito, not poor sanitation, spread malaria. Since the model’s unveiling at the Museum, huge advances have been made in the global effort to combat and treat malaria as well as to educate the public about the disease.

Photo: © AMNH

Mosquito on western rainbow boa

Photographed in Ecuador by Matthieu Berroneau

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

(Negative comments about mosquitoes will get you blocked.)

Maud Madsen (Canadian, 1993) - Mosquito Bites (2022)

one minute you’re sucking up mammal blood to cook up a batch of eggs with, and the next you’re in the jaws of a juvenile multilegged demon that has preyed on your kind for eternity. that’s bug

mosquito rogue (commission)

ARGH!! MOSQUITO SEASON!!

Tired of your players killing all your monsters? Set this on them. Bonus points if you make the tiny mosquito tone buzz every time one of them rolls juuuust below the required Perception DC. 

I don’t know why I made this

munition loaded- / clutched in skull and cruel palms / of a fear lover

Qualia Niccolino - "Insect stuffed animals you don't like"

Popcorn | 1991

Mosquito Swarm from Old School RuneScape

Sapphire-striped mosquito, Uranotaenia sapphirina, Culicidae

Found throughout eastern North America, females of this species are believed to feed solely on annelid hosts such as earthworms and leeches. Males do not take blood meals and instead feed on nectar.

Photos 1-2 (female) by berkshirenaturalist and 3 (male) by skevingtonam

*Reminder that negative comments about ANY bugs posted on my blog will get you blocked.

The Coon and Friends are finished!!! Now I've got to work on The Freedom Pals!!!

out of curiosity, what would happen if mosquitoes were to cease existence entirely? i've never known what they add to nature. i don't think they're useless, i simply do not know

lots summarized here:

basically: nobody really knows either, that’s a very hard thing to quantify. my guess: various ecosystems experience a drop (how much?) in productivity due to a lack of pollination and food for various aquatic and flying animals that depend on mosquito larvae and adults for food. particularly in areas like the Arctic which have tons of mosquitoes in the short summer, food/pollination would probably be felt especially bad—lots of birds, other insects, bats, etc must eat a lot of those trillions. certainly anything that specializes on mosquitoes (including mosquito-eating jumping spiders and mosquito-eating mosquitoes, plus plants that depend solely on them for pollination [there’s got to be some]) will go extinct.

maybe also creatures that mosquitoes keep in check through competition or disease also change their populations: again, hard to say exactly what will happen.

I think the most important thing with this question though is less about what we can predict and more about what we can’t. beyond mosquitoes, that’s what worries me most about insect declines: all the stuff they do that we don’t know about that keeps us all living the way we’re used to. it frightens me to think of people casually saying (and meaning it too) that all mosquitoes disappearing would be a good thing, as though real ecosystems were toys that humans ought to play with as we please without us and the rest of the world ever suffering the consequences—we all should have learned this lesson by now and taught it to anyone who does not know it