Sublethal effects of neurotoxic insecticides on insect behavior

Neurotoxic insecticides affect arthropod behavior at doses or with exposure times that are often much less than required to induce mortality. Compromised feeding, mating, harborage seeking, egg]laying, and pheromone responses may have large indirect impacts on pest reproduction or survival. These effects would be overlooked by traditional screening approaches. Here we evaluate these behaviors in the bed bug by exposing adults to residues of active ingredients determined to kill 10% of treated individuals. Active ingredients will be selected based on products with diverse modes of action, with compounds that are relevant for diverse pests (including bed bugs). While we focus initially on bed bugs, our goal is to develop approaches that are relevant to other pests. We predict that behavioral syndromes will characterize insecticides that share modes of action.