Requirement for Sugar in a Chemically Defined Diet for Larval Aedes Aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae)

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Abstract
Growth of Aedes aegypti L. larvae was compared on 2 kinds of casein-based dietary media and on fully defined media in which a mixture of 20 amino acids took the place of casein. Best performances in terms of development to adults and speed of larval growth to pupation were consistently obtained with the fully defined diet. The casein-based diets gave inconsistent results. With insoluble, vitamin-free casein this was in part due to differences in particle size, presumably resulting from slight uncontrolled differences in diet preparation from experiment to experiment; in extreme cases where no growth occurred, the casein particles were observably too big for 1st-instar larvae to ingest. Though not required for development to the adult stage, glucose markedly increased the rate of larval development to pupation. This is the first time Ae. aegypti has been successfully reared on a completely defined diet, with a mixture of nucleotides replacing the crude RNA used in previous investigations.

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