Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9361690:


Love Snake 25 5, 11:56pm

@BrainHigh You're right, actually, especially when road accidents are included. Apparently only about 9% of deaths annually are due to injury, but another 2.7% is due to road accidents, for a total of 11.7%, compared to 2.9% for diarrhoeal diseases, and a much smaller percentage for malaria (although, it should be said, malaria is still responsible for about 15% of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa). So, at least nowadays, humans are the leading cause of death for humans; but over the course of human history, mosquitoes have killed more people total than humans have. Interesting stuff!
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/

@AlephFIN It's true that the decline in flying insects is already taking its toll on birds in North America (http://www.bsc-eoc.org/download/BWCwi08.pdf), but it's a little hazier on whether mosquitoes specifically constitute a keystone species or not, at least for birds - mosquito *larvae* are a pretty well recognised important food source for fresh water fish and turtles (http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/mosquitosite/bats-and-birds/ ). There's also a debate on whether the types of mosquitoes that a) bite humans and b) spread disease are a keystone species or not, because there's 3,000 different types of mosquitoes and less than a dozen of them can harm humans (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27765974). But it's interesting stuff!