Both living bacteria and eukaryotes in the mosquito gut promote growth of larvae.

We recently reported that larval stage Aedes aegypti and several other species of mosquitoes grow when living bacteria are present in the gut but do not grow when living bacteria are absent. We further reported that living bacteria induce a hypoxia signal in the gut, which activates hypoxia-induced transcription factors and other processes larvae require for growth. In this study we assessed whether other types of organisms induce mosquito larvae to grow and asked if the density of non-living microbes or diet larvae are fed obviate the requirement for living organisms prior results indicated are required for growth. Using culture conditions identical to our own prior studies, we determined that inoculation density of living Escherichia coli positively affected growth rates of Ae. aegypti larvae, whereas non-living E. coli had no effect on growth across the same range of inoculation densities. A living yeast, alga, and insect cell line induced axenic Ae. aegypti first instars to grow, and stimulated similar levels of midgut hypoxia, HIF-α stabilization, and neutral lipid accumulation in the fat body as E. coli. However, the same organisms had no effect on larval growth if heat-killed. In addition, no axenic larvae molted when fed two other diets, when fed diets supplemented with heat-killed microbes or lysed and heat-killed microbes. Experiments conducted with An. gambiae yielded similar findings. Taken together, our results indicate that organisms from different prokaryotic and eukaryotic groups induce mosquito larvae to grow, whereas no conditions were identified that stimulated larvae to grow in the absence of living organisms.