What would happen, ecoligically, if we were able to make cockroaches extinct?

[Derleth]

@hotflungwok

What about mosquitos?

A more interesting question is what if we killed off all anopheles mosquitoes. (Yes, the thread title is a reference. If you think it’s wrong you don’t get the joke.)

[hotflungwok]

@Blake

Total ecological catastrophe. Never mind the predator species, mosquitoes are major vectors of diseases that control animal and plant populations. No mosquitoes, no disease, massive population explosion.

Couldn’t we just encourage hunting? And… vegetarians?

[DrDeth]

@Blake

There are thousands of species of cockroaches occupying most of the planet and a huge variety of ecological niches from eusocial termite analogues with queens and workers through to hemi-parsites, den parasites, and cave dwellers. They range in size from a few millimetres to over 3 1/2 inches. In many environments cockroaches are the single most common animal species.

Needless to say if we exterminated such a diverse and populous group we would cause massive ecological damage, but it;s hard to rpedict how severe it might be. We could resonably expect a few keystone species to be cockraoches in whcih case total collapse of a few ecostsyetms woudl be a reasonable prediction.
.

Right. However, if we just eliminated the German Brown Cockroach, the one sometimes called the house roach, it would not be automatically be such massive ecological damage. Other than a much lower “eeeewwww” factor, and less human disease, it might not cause more than a blip.

But if one eliminates* any* widespread common species, there could be unforseen consequences.

We pretty much know what would happen if the CA Condor went extinct- nothing. But that’s because they are so rare and their niche (eating dead mastodons ) is long gone.

[carterba]

@Johnny Hildo

I don’t think anyone would be missing the tapeworm.

I recently read Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. There is an interesting section in which he discusses the relationship between tapeworms and auto-immune disorders like Crohn’s disease. Apparently as populations have become more affluent and tapeworms less frequent, the incidence of Crohn’s disease has risen. It happened to American Jews in the 20’s and 30’s, whites in the 40’s, blacks in the 60’s and 70’s; there was also apparently an explosion of Crohn’s diagnoses in Japan and South Korea in the latter half of the 20th century. So, wondering whether there was a connection, some researchers fed tapeworm eggs to people diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. They found that patients given tapeworm eggs had their condition go into remission sooner and stay in remission longer than patients that didn’t get the eggs.

Here’s an article about it from the NY Times: link

This has also been tried and found successful for multiple sclerosis patients: News | BioEd Online

So the effect of the eradication of a species on an ecosystem can be highly unpredictable.

[kitemaker_chuck]

If cockroaches did become extinct, wouldn’t another species of insect (or other animal) just fill the “ecological” niche left by the cockroach?

[Johnny_Hildo]

@carterba

I recently read Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. There is an interesting section in which he discusses the relationship between tapeworms and auto-immune disorders like Crohn’s disease. Apparently as populations have become more affluent and tapeworms less frequent, the incidence of Crohn’s disease has risen. It happened to American Jews in the 20’s and 30’s, whites in the 40’s, blacks in the 60’s and 70’s; there was also apparently an explosion of Crohn’s diagnoses in Japan and South Korea in the latter half of the 20th century. So, wondering whether there was a connection, some researchers fed tapeworm eggs to people diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. They found that patients given tapeworm eggs had their condition go into remission sooner and stay in remission longer than patients that didn’t get the eggs.

Here’s an article about it from the NY Times: link

This has also been tried and found successful for multiple sclerosis patients: News | BioEd Online

So the effect of the eradication of a species on an ecosystem can be highly unpredictable.

Interesting in the sense that in the forgotten documentary I watched it said that tapeworms were the only species that held no beneficial aspect to the hosts they were inhabiting whatsoever. I guess dwindling the population of the host isn’t too beneficial, but in the grand scheme of things…

[Blake]

@kitemaker_chuck

If cockroaches did become extinct, wouldn’t another species of insect (or other animal) just fill the “ecological” niche left by the cockroach?

Given tens of millions of years this might well happen. More likely completely different species occupying totally different niches would exploit the food sources and habitat freed up by the extinctions. That is what usuall happens in the case of extinctions. Species actually evolving to fill the same ecological niche is fairly rare.

Either way in the short term there would be knock-on extinctions and shifts in ecosystems.