"If mosquitoes evolve to avoid longifolene, that could mean they'll stop responding to flowers," St. Leger explained. "But they need flowers as a food source to survive, so it would be very interesting to see how they could possibly avoid the fungus yet still be attracted to the flowers they need. This fills me with a sense of doom, like this is going to go down paths we would not predict.
Yes, it's hard for us to stay mindful that totally eradicating some creature that is merely a pest to us is possibly (or likely) filling some essential niche. We grew up on games with the goal of eradicating the enemy.
That's concerning for sure but I think there's a more likely scenario. The cohort of mosquitoes that are attracted to the fungus will be greatly reduced in numbers but the remaining ones will simply breed more to fill the void and we'll be back to square one.
