Resistance evolution, from genetic mechanism to ecological
context
Regina S. Baucom1, Veronica Iriart2,
Julia Kreiner3, and Sarah
Yakimowski4
1Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
2Department of Biological Sciences, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
3Biodiversity Research Centre & Department of Botany,
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
4Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston,
ON K7L 3N6
Correspondence
Regina S. Baucom, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109.
Email: rsbaucom@umich.edu
*Authors contributed equally
Pesticide use by humans has induced strong selective pressures,
reshaping evolutionary trajectories, ecological networks, and even
influencing ecosystem dynamics. The evolution of pesticide resistance
across weeds, insects, and fungi often leads to negative impacts on both
human health and the economy while concomitantly providing excellent
systems for studying the process of evolution. In fact, the study of
pesticide resistance has been a feature of evolutionary biology since
the Evolutionary Synthesis, with Dobzhansky noting in his book The
Genetics and Origins of Species (1937) that cyanide resistance in the
California red scale constituted the “best proof of the effectiveness
of natural selection yet obtained”. Following the pioneering work of
James Crow and others in the 1950’s—which greatly expanded our
knowledge of the genetics underlying adaptation—the study of pesticide
resistance has shed light on a variety of topics, such as the
repeatability of phenotypic evolution across the landscape, ‘hotspots’
of evolution across the genome, and information on the number and type
of genetic solutions that populations may employ to strong selection
pressures.
Landscape level approaches have come to the forefront over the last 20
years of resistance evolution research, often taking advantage of the
fact that replicated populations of the same species are exposed to the
same pesticide. Further, the resistance evolution field is turning more
attention to the ecological context within which resistance evolution
occurs, likely stemming, at least in part, from an historical focus on
fitness costs (Cousens & Fournier-Level 2018; Baucom 2019). This
special feature, ‘Resistance evolution, from genetic mechanism to
ecological context’ in Molecular Ecology captures the current state of
resistance evolution with contributions broadly addressing the question
‘What has the rapid evolution of pesticide resistance taught us
about genome dynamics and adaptation as well as the ecological context
within which resistance evolution occurs?’ Below, we contextualize the
manuscripts in this special issue that provide insight into the state of
the art investigations of resistance evolution across various species of
insects, weeds and fungi.