this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
40 points (100.0% liked)

Moving to: m/AskMbin!

1325 readers
1 users here now

### We are moving! **Join us in our new journey as we take a new direction towards the future for this community at mbin, find our new community here and read this post to know more about why we are moving. Thank you and we hope to see you there!**

founded 1 year ago
40
What animal or insect going extinct would have the greatest impact on the ecosystem? (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Curious on some replies here. I always hear having bees go extinct would be horrible for us. Curious if that’s the worse?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Bats are responsible for a lot of pollination too.

Most of our essential crops are wind pollinated (e.g. rice, wheat, corn) or asexual (potatoes). Colony collapse disorder is a real problem of course and colony management/replacement really eats into profitability, but domesticated bees won't become extinct because we so intensively manage them - however other species may be in real trouble. In addition, if we remove the main human causes of colony collapse (neonicotinoids?), they can potentially recover quite quickly, so it's not a problem that takes hundreds or thousands of years to fix, like some others - if we have the will to do it.