Evolution of resistance in the presence of two insecticides

A two-locus model is used to analyze the effectiveness of a mixture of insecticides in delaying resistance, compared to the use of the insecticides singly. The effects of factors such as recombination, effective dominance, initial value of allele frequencies and initial value of linkage disequilibrium are considered. It is shown that the use of mixtures is always more effective in delaying the onset of resistance, often by many orders of magnitude. It is shown that there exists a threshold value of recombination fraction, above which the evolution of resistance is extremely slow. Resistance evolves very rapidly for values of recombination fraction below the threshold. Finally, the relevance of these results on resistance management is discussed.