• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    6 days ago

    How many species of birds and bats eat just mosquitoes though, or a high enough percentage that they would go extinct rather than shift to rely more on their other prey species, even if at a smaller population? And are those particular species of birds and bats worth the consequences of having mosquitoes?

    • CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Which would maybe force some other animals to change their behaviour slightly more, which in turn affects yet other species. And so the butterfly effect rolls on.

      Or it doesn’t and the system stabilises in another state. Who knows, can we actually know it with a high enough certainty or are the dependencies and behavioural guesses too complex?

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        6 days ago

        I mean, has the system ever not eventually stabilized in another state? The fact that we have had extinctions, quite a lot of them even involving most species that have ever existed, and yet complex life and ecosystems still exist, would suggest that life will find a way to adapt around such a loss given time.