[Biochemical and serological characterization of "Bacillus sphaericus" strains, pathogenic or non-pathogenic for mosquitoes (author's transl)].

A biochemical and serological study of 35 Bacillus sphaericus strains including some pathogenic for mosquito larvae, is reported. A classification of these, and a differentiation of the pathogenic strains, cannot be made on the basis of the 78 phenotypic characters which have been determined by conventional methods. Numerical analysis of the results given by the auxanograms on 160 substrates, gives good results. An even more valuable approach is the flagellar agglutination technique, which clearly distinguishes the pathogenic from the non-pathogenic strains and furthermore can specifically differentiate strains among the pathogenic isolates.