Rapid Adaptation and Interspecific Introgression in the North American Crop Pest Helicoverpa zea.

ABSTRACT: Insect crop pests threaten global food security. This threat is amplified through the spread of nonnative species and through adaptation of native pests to control measures. Adaptations such as pesticide resistance can result from selection on variation within a population, or through gene flow from another population. We investigate these processes in an economically important noctuid crop pest, Helicoverpa zea, which has evolved resistance to a wide range of pesticides. Its sister species Helicoverpa armigera, first detected as an invasive species in Brazil in 2013, introduced the pyrethroid-resistance gene CYP337B3 to South American H. zea via adaptive introgression. To understand whether this could contribute to pesticide resistance in North America, we sequenced 237 H. zea genomes acr

SUBMITTER: North HL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11259193 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature