In a recent paper in Heredity, Alex Kraaijeveld and Charles Godfray show that Drosophila melanogaster has little chance in developing resistance to fungal pathogens such as Beauveria bassiana. This is significant as the same fungi and the related Metarhizium anisopliae are targeted to be used as biopesticides against disease vectoring mosquitoes (such as Anopheles) and other insect pests. In this paper, in a long-term artificial selection experiment for 15 generations, selected flies did not have higher overall fitness after infection compared with control lines. However, late-life fecundity increased in the selected lines, which may indicate evolved tolerance of the fungal pathogen. Nonetheless, this increase was balanced by decreased early-life fecundity in the selected lines. More importantly, in the absence of fungal infection, selected lines had lower overall fitness than control flies. In general, the paper demonstrated that Drosophila have a weak selection response to the fungal infection. If this is true to insects in general and to mosquitoes in particular, this might suggest that resistance to such fungal pesticides will not evolve easily and rapidly. This might give us just another novel tool for vector control, which is badly needed to reduce vector-borne diseases globally.
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