Mosquitoes are a good thing.

New York Times - The Arctic Needs Mosquitoes

Kendra Pierre-Louis@KendraWrites

Ask just about any human and they’ll tell you that mosquitoes are pests we’d be better off without, especially since some mosquitoes carry deadly diseases. Even many scientists agree: A 2010 article in the journal Nature concluded that a world without mosquitoes would be less itchy and less deadly for us, with few drawbacks for other species, outside of some ecological niches.

One of those niches is the Arctic, where mosquitoes play a bigger role in sustaining the ecosystem but may be threatened by the changing climate, said Lauren E. Culler, a research assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.

“You can collect pollen off of mosquitoes, indicating they may have a role in pollination,” she said. “And we know that they’re also food for other organisms in the food web.”

Just as the biologist Edward O. Wilson’s essay “The Little Things That Run the World” described the importance of insects and other invertebrates, Dr. Culler calls mosquitoes “the little things that run the polar world.”

She is now researching how changes in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast than the global average, are affecting mosquitoes. “Losing mosquitoes from the Arctic ecosystem could have some unanticipated impacts,” she said.

We’re not close to losing them yet, but things are changing fast in the region. In her most recent study Dr. Culler looked at how successfully mosquitoes were reproducing in Greenland. In her earlier work she found that mosquitoes were emerging earlier in the spring and maturing faster courtesy of the Arctic’s warming temperatures. But it was unclear whether this earlier emergence was endangering their survival.

Similarly concerning is that the ponds mosquitoes depend on as spots to lay eggs are disappearing in Greenland for unknown reasons.

“We do know in some years and in some places ponds are disappearing from the landscape before the mosquitoes can emerge,” Dr. Culler said.

Her study found that with the exception of the coldest ponds closest to Greenland’s ice sheet, female mosquitoes were successfully reproducing above the rate required to sustain the population. At least for now.

Life for mosquitoes in the Arctic already seems difficult, Dr. Culler said. “Most of the time when you look out on the tundra you’re not seeing tons of caribou or musk ox or other potential hosts for mosquitoes,” she said, referring to the blood meal that female mosquitoes need to lay eggs.