Experimental Selection for Insecticide Resistance

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Abstract
Experimental selection of insect cultures with insecticides to develop resistance in the laboratory is reviewed. Aedes, Culex, Musca, and Heliothis are considered because they are the insect genera most commonly used in experimental selection. When the rates at which resistance developed are compared, resistance to the axonic poisons DDT and permethrin is found to have developed more rapidly than resistance to malathion, parathion, and other acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. The degree to which resistance developed in the laboratory was usually equaled or exceeded in field collections within one decade of the laboratory experiments. Procedures are suggested for laboratory selection for resistance as a component of a resistance risk assessment system. The relevance of the experimental results to actual development of resistance in the field must be assessed by determining whether common genetic mechanisms are involved. This information is available in the literature but will require the tedious tracking of genetic strains used in experimental selection and subsequently used in studies of genetic and biochemical mechanisms. Such an undertaking was beyond the scope of the present review.