Method of Natural Mating of Anopheles dirus in Laboratory / 第三军医大学学报

ABSTRACT

Anopheles dirus Peyton et Harrison 1979 is an important vector of malaria in Southeast Asia and China especially in the hilly forest regions. It is an urgent problem to establish a natural mating colony of this species in a laboratory condition for malaria research. This article is to report the experience of raising A, dirus in our laboratory. The larvae were fed with a mixture of dry powdered pig liver and yeast in a ratio of 13. The adult mosquitoes were fed with 10% glucose solution containing 4% orange juice and 0.05% para-amino benzoic acid. Two types of cages were used as the insectary for adult mosquitoes; the large cage was 50?50?100 cm in size while the small cage 31?20?22 cm. The insectary was maintained under a temperature of 25-28℃ and a relative humidity of 80%.It was illuminated with a 30 w fluorescent light in the day time and a 15 w blue light in the night to induce mating. In the large cage, rockery and vegetations were furnished for the resting of mosquitoes.In the large cage, the mosquito colony has been propagated to the 42nd generation and the natural mating rate was stablized around 80% with a highest rate of 90.63%. In the small cage, a colony was set up by transferring the 15th generation mosquitoes from the large cage and has been propagated to the 28th generation. The natural mating rate in the small cage reached 68.96% with a highest rate of 80.36% at the 14th generation. Though it dropped slightly after the 14th generation during the summer season, it was still maintained at a satisfactory level.In addition, the optimal time and conditions to induce natural mating and to transfer mosquitoes from the large to the small cage were discussed.