Mosquitoes have evolved increased resistance to pyrethroid insecticides including permethrin, and studying their metabolic mechanisms of resistance is the window to human counteraction. If early exposure to insecticides can upregulate certain detoxification genes, this creates lower rates of mortality in a single mosquito’s lifetime. Yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) were exposed to a sublethal dosage of permethrin and mortality rates at a later LC50 dose exposure were recorded. Mortality rates of induced mosquitoes were not lower than the mortality rates of unexposed (control) mosquito groups. If early exposure did not increase mortality, either evidence for inducible same-generational resistance remains to be seen in Aedes aegypti, or other factors were responsible for under-stimulating inducible resistance that were not acknowledged in the experimental design. The experiment may be replicated with adjusted test intervals to find the exact interval at which the upregulated proteins are still active and can confer resistance
