Authorities eased this onerous system in the years after World War II as they found success in wiping out mosquitoes with a new weapon: the insecticide DDT. Inside A. aegypti mosquitoes, disease-causing viruses also exploit their hosts’ cells to reproduce. Some scientists suggest that if every mosquito species were to disappear, there would be significant impacts on bird populations. Some mosquitoes are pollinators, although very few plant species are only pollinated by mosquitoes. Our efforts to remove even one ecologically unimportant mosquito species have fallen short for now.