Spontaneous mutation rates and evolution of insecticide resistance in an agricultural pest (EvolPest)

• Applicant: Professor Shuqing Xu, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Evolutionary Cell and Developmental Biology (Zoology) ; General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 451977135

Resistance to insecticides in insect pests is a remarkable example of rapid adaptation in a human-mediated evolutionary experiment. It has become apparent that insecticide resistance is unavoidable under current agricultural practices and threatens global food supply, highlighting the urgent need to investigate the evolutionary processes of insecticide resistance. The Colorado potato beetle (CPB, Leptinotarsa decemlineata), an insect with little practical significance to crops 150 years ago, is now a devastating global pest of potato and other solanaceous crops and has evolved resistance to nearly all known insecticides. The remarkable resistance to insecticides and relatively short and well-known natural history thus make CPB an ideal system to study the mechanisms of insecticide resistance and evolutionary processes of agricultural pests. Here, we will investigate the evolution of CPB and its insecticide resistance by measuring key population genetic parameters and reconstruct the demographic history of CPB. Specifically, we will 1) estimate spontaneous mutation rates in CPB and evaluate the extent to which the mutation rates are affected by a low-dosage of insecticide in mutation accumulation experiments; 2) map genetic basis of resistance to two widely used insecticides through bulk-segregation analysis; 3) characterize the evolutionary history of CPB and its resistance by re-sequencing the genomes of globally distributed CPB populations. The outcomes of this project will push the boundaries of our current knowledge of insecticide resistance evolution by providing both mechanistic and genomic insights into how current agricultural practices might have contributed to the evolution of a devastating pest. The obtained population genetic parameters may further facilitate the development of sustainable pest control strategies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants