The Effects of Nutrition on Survival and Fecundity in Florida Mosquitoes: Part 2. Utilization of a blood meal for survival1

Abstract

Unfed 2- to 5-day-old females of different species of Florida mosquitoes were fed ad lib. a meal of chicken blood to repletion and analyzed for weights and calorie intake, survival, and accumulation and depletion of energy reserves. Females ingested blood meals with wet weights of 2.5 to 4 times greater than their own wet weights and dry weights of 1.2 to 1.7 times greater than their own dry weights. Efficiency of blood ingested for survival was highest in Aedes aegypti (84.5 hr/cal.) followed by Aedes taeniorhynchus (68.5 hr/cal.) and A. sollicitans, Anopheles quadrimaculatus and Psorophora confinnis (44.0 to 48.4 hr/cal.). Glycogen and triglycerides accumulated after blood ingestion, reaching maximum values within 24 to 72 hr before decreasing to stable values in the next 24 to 96 hr. Part of the energy reserves synthesized from blood prolonged survival of unfed females from 3 days in An. quadrimaculatus to 8 days in A. taeniorhynchus more than the starved females, and the remainder of the reserves was stored in yolk of matured oocytes. It is concluded that a blood meal provides sufficient reserves to enable the species investigated to survive long enough to produce a batch of eggs.