Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #341441
Research Project: Managing Insects in the Corn Agro-Ecosystem

Location: Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research

Title: Editorial overview: Pests and resistance: Shedding the albatross of resistance starts by embracing the ecological complexities of its evolution

Author
item Sappington, Thomas
item MILLER, NICHOLAS - Illinois Institute Of Technology

Submitted to: Current Opinion in Insect Science
Publication Type: Literature Review
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/11/2017
Publication Date: 8/17/2017
Citation: Sappington, T.W., Miller, N.J. 2017. Editorial overview: Pests and resistance: Shedding the albatross of resistance starts by embracing the ecological complexities of its evolution. Current Opinion in Insect Science. 21:v-viii.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Adaptation of a species to a pest control measure, such as an insecticide, involves essentially the same evolutionary processes that result in adaptation to any environmental stressor. The living insects targeted by a control tactic are the latest product of countless generations of natural selection against a complex historical medley of stressors on its ancestors. New chemical insecticides, or transgenic crops using engineered DNA from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to produce an insecticidal protein, are often deployed widely and quickly by humans, putting pest populations under intense selection pressure. Adaptations to environmental stressors can pre-adapt insects to either tolerate or evolve resistance to human-imposed stressors, i.e., control tactics. Several of the reviews in this issue touch on the phenomenon of pre-existing resistance mechanisms, how they arise and how they are maintained. Because pest resistance is a serious threat to control measures, humans have undertaken to intervene in clever ways to slow its evolution or to contain and mitigate its effects on crop production once it does evolve. Intervention with insect resistance management (IRM) strategies to preserve efficacy of Bt crops has been a fascinating evolutionary experiment implemented on a grand spatial scale over the last 20+ years in several countries. We are learning as we go, not only about how to design better IRM strategies, but how evolution works at different spatial and temporal scales.