The role of evolving niche choice in herbivore adaptation to host plants: Literature survey data and R scripts for simulations

Individuals living in heterogeneous environments often choose microenvironments that provide benefits to their fitness. Theory predicts that such niche choice can promote rapid adaptation to novel environments and help maintain genetic diversity. An open question of large applied importance is how niche choice and niche choice evolution affect the evolution of insecticide resistance in phytophagous insects. We, therefore, developed an individual-based model based on phytophagous insects to examine the evolution of insecticide resistance and  niche choice via oviposition preferences. To find biologically realistic parameter ranges, we performed an empirical literature survey on insecticide resistance in major agricultural pests and also conducted a density-dependent survival experiment using potato beetles. We find that, in comparison to a scenario where individuals randomly oviposit eggs on toxic or non-toxic plants, the evolution of niche choice generally leads to slower evolution of r..., The data was obtained from the Arthropod Pesticide Resistance Database where a list of the top 10 agricultural pests with the most cases of pesticide resistance and ranked them according to the number of compounds they were reported to be resistant against. 
These are R scripts used during the simulation., , # The role of evolving niche choice in herbivore adaptation to host plants: Literature survey data and R scripts for simulations

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gtht76hwx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gtht76hwx)

## Description of the raw data files: Prepared by Alitha Edison, 07/08/2023.

### Files and variables

\**Resistance.csv **with variables below

T_Mortliaty_Mean: Average mortality of the population on toxic plants

C_Mortliaty_Mean: Average mortality of the population on nontoxic plants

Resistance: Whether it is a resistant (R), susceptible(S) or a cross (RS, SR, …) population

PaperID: First one or two digits denote the species, followed by year and last name of first author

\**Choice.csv **with variables below

CI: Choice index = (Number of eggs on toxic plants-Number of eggs on nontoxic plants)/(Number of eggs on toxic plants+Number of eggs on nontoxic plants)

T-eggs: Number of eggs on toxic plants

C-eggs: Number of eggs on nontoxic plants

PaperID: First one or two di...