Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Entomology Branch, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.
Frontier Scientific Services, Newark, Delaware, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 11;15(3):e0221838. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221838. eCollection 2020.
Larval mosquitoes are aquatic omnivorous scavengers which scrape food from submerged surfaces and collect suspended food particles with their mouth brushes. The composition of diets that have been used in insectaries varies widely though necessarily provides sufficient nutrition to allow colonies to be maintained. Issues such as cost, availability and experience influence which diet is selected. One component of larval diets, essential fatty acids, appears to be necessary for normal flight though deficiencies may not be evident in laboratory cages and are likely more important when mosquitoes are reared for release into the field in e.g. mark-release-recapture and genetic control activities. In this study, four diets were compared for rearing Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti, all of which provide these essential fatty acids. Two diets were custom formulations specifically designed for mosquitoes (Damiens) and two were commercially available fish foods: Doctors Foster and Smith Koi Staple Diet and TetraMin Plus Flakes. Development rate, survival, dry weight and adult longevity of mosquitoes reared with these four diets were measured. The method of presentation of one diet, Koi pellets, was additionally fed in two forms, pellets or a slurry, to determine any effect of food presentation on survival and development rate. While various criteria might be selected to choose 'the best' food, the readily-available Koi pellets resulted in development rates and adult longevity equal to the other diets, high survival to the adult stage and, additionally, this is available at low cost.
幼虫期的蚊子是水生杂食性清道夫，它们从水下表面刮取食物，并利用口刷收集悬浮的食物颗粒。昆虫饲养所使用的饮食组成差异很大，但必须提供足够的营养来维持群体。成本、可用性和经验等因素会影响选择哪种饮食。幼虫饮食的一个组成部分，必需脂肪酸，似乎对正常飞行是必要的，尽管在实验室笼子中可能没有明显的缺乏，而且当蚊子被饲养并释放到野外时，例如在标记释放捕获和遗传控制活动中，可能更为重要。在这项研究中，比较了四种用于饲养冈比亚按蚊和埃及伊蚊的饮食，这些饮食都提供了这些必需脂肪酸。两种饮食是专门为蚊子设计的定制配方（达米恩斯），两种是市售的鱼类食物：医生福斯特和史密斯锦鲤主食和 tetraMin 加薄片。用这四种饮食饲养的蚊子的发育速度、存活率、干重和成虫寿命都进行了测量。一种饮食，锦鲤颗粒，另外以两种形式，颗粒或浆糊，来确定食物呈现方式对存活率和发育速度的任何影响。虽然可以选择各种标准来选择“最好”的食物，但现成的锦鲤颗粒导致了与其他饮食相同的发育速度和成虫寿命，成虫阶段的高存活率，此外，这种食物的成本也很低。
