Inhibition of Blood Digestion in Mosquitoes by Cations, and Cation–Antibiotic Mixtures

Abstract

DURING the course of some studies originally designed to evaluate the role of certain cations and anions in influencing the susceptibility of Aedes aegypti to infection with Plasmodium gallinaceum, it became apparent that the calcium fed to these mosquitoes was also consistently inhibiting digestion of the ingested blood meal in a fairly constant proportion of the mosquitoes. This report extends this observation somewhat, and deals with some preliminary experiments on the inhibitory effects of the cations calcium and magnesium, alone and in combination with the antibiotic oxytetracycline, on the process of blood digestion in the mosquito A. aegypti.