Competition and resistance to starvation in larvae of container‐inhabiting Aedes mosquitoes

Abstract. 1. Hypotheses about declining populations of container‐inhabiting Aedes mosquitoes following the invasion by additional species were tested. 2. The larval competition hypothesis was studied experimentally in pure and mixed cultures of Aedes aegypti (L.), A.albopictus (Skuse) and A.triseriatus (Say). The experiments used decomposing leaf litter in the laboratory, as opposed to most previous research which used non‐natural food. 3. Resistance to starvation is introduced as a new measure of larval performance and competitiveness. The hypothesis is that more successful larvae store larger energy reserves and resist the lack of food longer. 4. Contrary to previous research showing better performance of A.aegypti in mixed cultures, A.albopictus developed faster and had greater survival when natural food was used. 5. Resistance to starvation was greater in the better performing species (i.e. A.aegypti with non‐natural food and A.albopictus with leaf litter). Oxygen consumption by starved larvae was similar in the three container species, and in the ground‐water mosquito, A.taeniorhynchus (Wied.), whose resistance to starvation was comparatively very low.