• CryptidBestiary@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yup, while they don’t collect pollen, they do visit flowers to find nectar for themselves. They inadvertently transfer pollen from plant to plant.

    • Nightwatch Admin@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      No, the idea is that bees are useful because pollinators, and honey.
      However, wasps may not be the friendliest creatures around, but they are certainly useful too - like cleaning up corpses, leftovers, and last but not least they eat insects that we think of as plagues

        • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          but have you tried to find out if we really can’t live without them? because I would definitely support the anti-wasp movement

          • MintyAnt@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            As they are insect hunters, yes their absence would fuck up our already damaged ecosystem. I would guess it would lead to a different insect getting out of control and causing tons of problems - like a non native leaf miner who then proceeds to multiply like crazy and obliterate all leaves off trees kind of deal.

          • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Anti-mosquitoes first please. I have yet to hear a single good point in defense of mosquitoes (unless they just went down the memory hole.)

    • benignintervention@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Check out the book (or audiobook) Endless Forms by Seirian Sumner! It’s a fascinating exploration of the different kinds of wasps and their role in their environments. For example, some figs can only be polite (typo: pollinated) but a certain species of wasp and some wasps use antibacterial compounds to coat their nests.

  • uphillbothways@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Meanwhile, mosquitoes… pollinating, cleaning waterways as nymphs, females just needing the slightest amount of blood to lay a couple hundred eggs. Forgotten, maligned, made the focus of actual efforts to purposefully cause species extinction. ._.

    • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not all mosquitoes bite humans. So, you could eradicate the biting variety, and a non-biting variety would step in to fill that ecological niche. I don’t see a downside.