[simias]

This is a very interesting comment but I feel the need to point out that your comparing the Irish population to mosquitoes could be perceived as a bit harsh!

Not to mention that if you actually manage to reduce the mosquito population by 20 to 25% (as the Great Famine did in ireland) I'm sure you'll see an impact on the following years.

[thaumasiotes]

Harshness is definitely not intended. I was hoping to evoke people's direct lived experience of (1) killing lots and lots of mosquitoes, and then (2) failing to notice any impact at all on the prevalence of mosquitoes. Unfortunately, choosing something with a reproductive cycle that humans can have gut-feeling level experience with restricted my analogical options to, um, "undesirables". The point I'm trying to make is that they're both living systems, and living systems of all types grow incredibly quickly.

Look at this another way: over the last 50 years, the population of Ireland grew by 50%. Over the 50 years before that, it grew by negative three percent. And the famine happened 50 years before that. It seems very difficult to explain the 1911-1961 performance in terms of the famine.

> Not to mention that if you actually manage to reduce the mosquito population by 20 to 25% (as the Great Famine did in ireland) I'm sure you'll see an impact on the following years.

I honestly wouldn't expect that impact to last more than two years, if that. But that's a guess. (Consider again: in 50 years (roughly 2 human generations), Ireland's population grew 50%. If the mosquito generation length is one year, then at the same rate they could recover fully from losing 33% of their population in... two years. But insects generally follow a strategy of laying many, many more eggs than the environment can ever support as adults, so I'd kind of expect the effects to wash out in a single generation.)

[simias]

Maybe because mosquitoes don't have a culture? The trauma of the famine spreads across generations, it can have changed the mentality of the Irish people durably, made them have fewer children on average.

[thaumasiotes]

Well, I referred to that idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

But as something that happened everywhere[1], it's also hard to attribute to the famine. Then again, the only source I found (I didn't look hard) for Irish fertility data went back to 1975, so it might be hard to evaluate the theory.

[1] Demographic transition has not happened everywhere

[PeterisP]

It could have, but AFAIK we aren't seeing similar effects for other nations after having great famines with large mortality, so I'd assume that it's not the case.

[barrkel]

The effects of the Famine are still felt in Ireland today. It changed the way survivors thought, and altered the culture IMO. Though it's hard to say what Ireland would be like today without it having happened.

[smoyer]

African mosquitoes or European mosquitoes?