Effectiveness of different blood anticoagulants for artificial feeding of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the laboratory

Blood feeding is an essential feature to mosquitoes' colony maintenance, once females need blood from host to mature eggs. The once used methods of feeding directly on mammals or other vertebrates have been increasingly substituted for artificial feeders using pre-collected blood, in accordance with good laboratory practices and animal welfare. The artificial feeding method must allow females to lay viable eggs, in rates comparable with those of females fed directly on animals. Here, we tested the efficiency of artificially feeding mosquitoes Aedes aegypti versus the feeding on anaesthetised mouse in the laboratory. Moreover, we compared reproductive parameters of females fed on rabbit blood treated with three different anticoagulant methods (sodium citrate, heparin and defibrination) to select the best efficiency method. Our results show that artificial feeding was as attractive for females as the anaesthetised mouse, since no significant difference in the percentage of engorged females was found among methods. The average number of eggs laid per female was significantly lower when females fed on blood treated with the anticoagulant sodium citrate, while no difference was found among the other methods. Also, there was no significant difference among methods when egg viability was measured. Overall, our results confirm that different methods used for blood anticoagulation are similar in feeding and reproductive efficiency of mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, and are equivalent to feeding on anaesthetised mice in the laboratory.