Evolutionary ecotoxicology of pesticide resistance

Authors: Mieke Jansen Anja Coors Robby Stoks Luc De Meester

Publish Date: 2011/03/05

Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 543-551

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Abstract

Natural populations that are exposed to pesticides in their environment may at the same time be exposed to natural stressors like parasites and predators which may interact with pesticide exposure This may not only impact target pest species but also a wide variety of nontarget species This review reports on a joint research program in the water flea Daphnia magna a nontarget species often used as model organism in ecology and ecotoxicology The focus is on different aspects that are of key importance to understand the evolutionary ecology of pesticide exposure 1 the capacity of natural populations to genetically adapt to pesticide exposure 2 the added complexity of synergistic effects caused by simultaneous exposure to natural stressors and 3 the potential interference of evolutionary costs of adaptation to pesticide exposure Our results showed that natural populations were able to rapidly evolve resistance to the pesticide carbaryl but at the expense of fitness costs Individuals selected for carbaryl resistance had higher survival rates when exposed to the pesticide but also a greater susceptibility to the challenge imposed by the bacterial endoparasite Pasteuria ramosa The evolved resistance to carbaryl was in some cases only expressed in the absence of fish kairomones Further it became clear that the responses to both exposure to single and combined stressors was for several life history variables strongly dependent upon past exposure to carbaryl This indicates that past exposures to pesticides are important and can not be neglected when evaluating responses to current stressorsMJ enjoyed a PhD fellowship of the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders IWT Flanders during this study AC was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship of the KU Leuven This research was financially supported by projects GOA/08/06 and PF/2010/07 of the KU Leuven Research Fund and project G022909 of FWO Flanders We thank two anonymous reviewers and the committee members of the PhD of MJ Nico van Straalen John Colbourne Karel De Schamphelaere Dries Knapen Luisa Orsini Ellen Decaestecker Filip Volckaert for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript

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