COMMENSAL ISSUE 92

A tongue in cheek offering for Commensal. After oysters in heaven I thought, what about Mozzies on earth ?

WHAT USE IS A MOSQUITO ?

A group of idle chatterers were drinking beer the other night and arrived at a philosophical discussion.

Like our august predecessors who spent hours trying to decide how many angels could fit on a pinhead we got to talking about the usefulness of animals in this world and we came to the conclusion that nearly every animal had a beneficial purpose in the world. Predators cull the weaker members of their prey so ensuring the improvement of the species. Others provide food at various stages of the food chain, even the humble fly enables vegetarian Indians to live by transferring vitamin b12 in the minute quantities required from faeces to the food so ensuring that the vegetarians receive enough of the vitamin to survive. The tsetse fly is the last defence of the indigenous herbivores against the depredations of imported cattle in Africa and elsewhere. But what about the Mosquito that is responsible for the deaths of more people per year than any other member of the animal kingdom? Her targets are not selective - anybody can catch malaria and die from it. What use is a mosquito in the grand scheme of things?

John Neary

John : as you say, this is tongue is cheek. It raises the question of whether natural things have "uses" or whether this whole idea is anthropocentric. By "use", presumably you mean "have some, albeit surprising, beneficial effect in the overall scheme of things". Does this indicate an optimistic outlook - rather than the more pessimistic (or, more strictly, neutral) evolutionary "each organism for itself" approach. Presumably, a mosquito’s use is simply to be a mosquito, making its way as best it can. Maybe what we’re after is to know whether other organisms have taken advantage of the mosquito’s feeding habits. As you are probably aware, mosquitoes are indirectly responsible for the prevalence of sickle-cell anaemia, given that victims of sickle-cell anaemia are resistant to malaria, so that the Hb S gene that causes the sickle-cell condition is therefore selected for.

Theo