Moving to: m/AskMbin!

19 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

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 MadCybertist@kbin.social to c/AskKbin@kbin.social

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

[–] VoxAdActa@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

That's really the only right answer. If we're looking at the impact of a single species, as opposed to a genus, family, or order (like most of the other answers are doing, e.g., "spiders"), humans are the only single species whose absence would cause vast changes in the biosphere. We have no other close taxonomic relatives that could step into our "niche" and continue doing what we're doing. Losing one species of mosquito (instead of the whole genus) or one species of plankton (instead of the entire.. god, what, order? Clade?) wouldn't produce any significant effect by itself.