Evolutionary trade-offs of insecticide resistance – the fitness costs associated with target-site mutations in the nAChR of Drosophila melanogaster

The evolution of resistance to drugs and pesticides poses a major threat to human health and food security. Neonicotinoids are highly effective insecticides used to control agricultural pests. They target the insect nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and mutations of the receptor that confer resistance have been slow to develop, with only one field-evolved mutation being reported to date. This is an arginine to threonine substitution at position 81 of the nAChR_β1 subunit in neonicotinoid resistant aphids. To validate the role of R81T in neonicotinoid resistance and to test whether it may confer any significant fitness costs to insects, CRISPR/Cas9 was used to introduce an analogous mutation in the genome of Drosophila melanogaster. Flies carrying R81T showed an increased tolerance (resistance) to neonicotinoid insecticides, accompanied by a significant reduction in fitness. In comparison,flies carrying a deletion of the whole nAChR_α6 subunit, the target-site of spinosyns, showed an increased tolerance to this class of insecticides but presented almost no fitness deficits.