SkitoSnak™: An alternative blood free diet for Aedes aegypti mass rearing

Anautogenous female mosquitoes require a vertebrate blood meal in order to deposit essential amino acids into oocytes for egg development. Currently, maintaining anautogenous mosquito culture in a laboratory setting requires using whole blood from vertebrates. In this study, we compared different blood fractions, serum and red blood cells, as dietary protein sources for mosquito egg production. We also tested artificial diets made from commercially available blood proteins (bovine serum albumin (BSA) and hemoglobin). We found that Ae. aegypti performed vitellogenesis and produced eggs when given whole bovine blood, serum, or an artificial diet containing BSA. Conversely, egg production was impaired after feeding of the red blood cell fraction or an artificial diet containing only hemoglobin. We also found that egg viability of serum-fed mosquitoes were comparable to that of whole blood and an iron supplemented BSA meal produced more viable eggs than a meal containing BSA alone. Our results indicate that serum proteins, not hemoglobin, may replace vertebrate blood in artificial diets for mass mosquito rearing.