Analysis of composition of sugar meals of wild mosquitoes by gas chromatography

Gas chromatography (GC) was successfully used for the first time to determi ne the components of natural sugar meals in individual mosquitoes and to de termine whether carbohydrases are present in the crops of these insects. Cr ops of wild mosquitoes collected from a 2-ha cypress swamp north of Gainesv ille, FL, contained fructose, glucose, sucrose, maltose, turanose, melibios e,. erlose, melezitose, raffinose, and a few unidentified carbohydrates. Ti me course studies with male and female Aedes albopictus showed rapid hydrol ysis (>90%) of sucrose occurring within 2 h of ingestion, whereas melezitos e remained relatively unchanged even 8 h after ingestion. The crop extracti on/GC analysis technique is an improvement over the cold anthrone test trad itionally used for sugar analysis. This procedure is a rapid one-step proce ss used to determine natural sugar sources, hydrolysis, occurrence, and pre ferences for individual wild sugar-feeding Diptera.