Mosquitoes can carry and transmit many diseases to humans. In the past, the insecticide DDT was heavily used to reduce mosquito populations in order to reduce instances of disease transmission. However, after some time, mosquito populations developed a resistance to DDT, which made the DDT less effective in reducing mosquito populations.
Based on what you've learned about natural selection, in 3-5 sentences, describe how mosquitoes may have come to develop this resistance.
(4 points)
Mosquitoes may have come to develop resistance to DDT through natural selection. The spraying of DDT created a selection pressure on the mosquito population, favoring those individuals that had genetic variations that made them more resistant to the insecticide. These resistant mosquitoes survived and reproduced, passing on their genetic traits to the next generation. Over time, this led to an increase in the percentage of mosquitoes with the resistance gene, resulting in a population more resistant to DDT.
