Turning Ecology Against Pesticide Resistance: Exploiting Competition in Pest Populations Through Pesticide Use

Modern agriculture is dependent on the efficacy of pesticides in controlling pests. However, such efficacy is threatened by the evolution of resistance. Although pesticides are essentially novel chemical compounds, target pests can manifest resistance soon after these compounds are introduced. Inspired by recent advances in medical research, we propose an ecologically inspired paradigm in pest management through pesticide use that capitalizes on competitive interactions between pesticide-sensitive and pesticide-resistant individuals. This principle relies on a reactive use of pesticides, constantly tracking pest response, promoting the containment of the pest population below economic injury levels, and buffering resistant individuals' proliferation. Using a mathematical model, we show that containing pests' abundance at critical levels, instead of seeking immediate eradication, diminishes management failure by reducing resistant individuals' growth rates, and consequently the time until resistant-pest dominance. Therefore, management strategies that maximize the abundance of pesticide-sensitive individuals, or explore the potential competitive ability of these populations, can hamper resistance proliferation. The insights provided by our simulations reconcile key challenges in environmental management, emphasizing the importance of managing threats to the food production systems using a proactive ecological and evolutionary-informed approach. They also highlight several opportunities for new experimental and theoretical research into the ecological facet of managing pesticide resistance in crops.