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1. Landscape simplification increases vineyard pest outbreaks and insecticide use

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   Paredes, Daniel; Rosenheim, Jay_A; Chaplin‐Kramer, Rebecca; Winter, Silvia; Karp, Daniel_S; Mori, ed., Akira (October 2020, Ecology Letters)

   Abstract Diversifying agricultural landscapes may mitigate biodiversity declines and improve pest management. Yet landscapes are rarely managed to suppress pests, in part because researchers seldom measure key variables related to pest outbreaks and insecticides that drive management decisions. We used a 13‐year government database to analyse landscape effects on European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) outbreaks and insecticides acrossc. 400 Spanish vineyards. At harvest, we found pest outbreaks increased four‐fold in simplified, vineyard‐dominated landscapes compared to complex landscapes in which vineyards are surrounded by semi‐natural habitats. Similarly, insecticide applications doubled in vineyard‐dominated landscapes but declined in vineyards surrounded by shrubland. Importantly, pest population stochasticity would have masked these large effects if numbers of study sites and years were reduced to typical levels in landscape pest‐control studies. Our results suggest increasing landscape complexity may mitigate pest populations and insecticide applications. Habitat conservation represents an economically and environmentally sound approach for achieving sustainable grape production. 

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2. Cell lines derived from the small hive beetle, Aethina tumida, express insecticide targets

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   Corcoran, Jacob; Goodman, Cynthia L.; Saathoff, Stephen; Ringbauer, Joseph A.; Guo, Ya; Bonning, Bryony; Stanley, David (October 2021, In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology - Animal)
3. Insecticide resistance and malaria control: A genetics-epidemiology modeling approach

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4. The impact of temperature and decay in insecticide-treated net efficacy on malaria prevalence and control

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   Ngonghala, Calistus N. (January 2023, Mathematical Biosciences)
5. Transcriptome Responses to Defined Insecticide Selection Pressures in the German Cockroach (Blattella germanica L.)

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.816675  

   Scharf, Michael E.; Wolfe, Zachery M.; Raje, Kapil R.; Fardisi, Mahsa; Thimmapuram, Jyothi; Bhide, Ketaki; Gondhalekar, Ameya D. (February 2022, Frontiers in Physiology)

   Cockroaches are important global urban pests from aesthetic and health perspectives. Insecticides represent the most cost-effective way to control cockroaches and limit their impacts on human health. However, cockroaches readily develop insecticide resistance, which can quickly limit efficacy of even the newest and most effective insecticide products. The goal of this research was to understand whole-body physiological responses in German cockroaches, at the metatranscriptome level, to defined insecticide selection pressures. We used the insecticide indoxacarb as the selecting insecticide, which is an important bait active ingredient for cockroach control. Six generations of selection with indoxacarb bait produced a strain with substantial (>20×) resistance relative to inbred control lines originating from the same parental stock. Metatranscriptome sequencing revealed 1,123 significantly differentially expressed (DE) genes in ≥two of three statistical models (81 upregulated and 1,042 downregulated; FDR P < 0.001; log2FC of ±1). Upregulated DE genes represented many detoxification enzyme families including cytochrome-P450 oxidative enzymes, hydrolases and glutathione- S -transferases. Interestingly, the majority of downregulated DE genes were from microbial and viral origins, indicating that selection for resistance is also associated with elimination of commensal, pathogenic and/or parasitic microbes. These microbial impacts could result from: (i) direct effects of indoxacarb, (ii) indirect effects of antimicrobial preservatives included in the selecting bait matrix, or (iii) selection for general stress response mechanisms that confer both xenobiotic resistance and immunity. These results provide novel physiological insights into insecticide resistance evolution and mechanisms, as well as novel insights into parallel fitness benefits associated with selection for insecticide resistance. 

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