author(s)
Kamlesh K Yadav, Ashok Naglot, Prabhakargouda B Patil, Sameer S Bhagyawant, Vijay Veer and P Srinivas Raju

abstract
The bacterial species Dietzia maris have been recently reported from the midgut of Aedes albopictus, however its importance was still unexplored. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of D. maris on egg hatching, development and survival of larvae of Ae. albopictus. The eggs of laboratory reared Ae. albopictus mosquitoes was exposed to bacterial suspension of D. maris and the larval development progress was recorded every 24 hours until they reach to fourth instar larval stage from the eggs. Observations revealed that eggs treated with D. maris hatched early and the developmental rate increased significantly with surviving larvae (81.67%) reaching the fourth instar by day-5 in comparison with larvae in control groups (69.67%) where the development duration to reach fourth instar was found to be 7 days (P = 0.021). The number of eggs hatched and survived in the treatment group was slightly but significantly higher compared to control groups. Mortality observed during the development in control group (12.4%) was slightly higher but statistically non-significant in comparison with mortality (4.3%) in treatment group (Sig. 2-tailed = 0.247). In the view of present findings, understanding on the larval ecology could lead to its possible utilization in mosquito rearing and alternatively in the mosquito control by targeting the larval ecology.