An overview of the mitigating mechanisms of the fitness cost of mutations associated with pesticide resistance in arthropods

Alleles that cause resistance to pesticides may also result in host physiological cost, as they can impair phenotypes such as reproduction and survival. However, works have described that in some arthropods mechanisms that mitigate the physiological cost have also been selected. This review covers a survey of the fitness attenuating mechanisms reported in the literature that can contribute to the maintenance of resistance in arthropods. Searches were made in the Pubmed and Scopus databases, from October 2019 to January 2020, to find references related to the topic, using combinations of key words, the Boolean operator AND, as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria. Sixty-one scientific articles were obtained, which were selected from the title and abstract. Different attenuation mechanisms were found and were classified into nine categories according to the mechanism of action described in the article. The Diptera Order was the most addressed in the articles (24 articles), represented mainly by the Culicidae family mosquitoes (17 articles). Gene duplication, mainly of acetylcholinesterase genes, was the mechanism most found (14 articles), and the one with the greatest variety of species in which it occurs (eight species from three Orders, including insects and arachnids).