Establishing Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) as a new insect model for high-throughput pesticide toxicity assessment
The increasing demand for efficient and ecologically relevant toxicity assessment methods has driven the exploration of alternative model organisms. The Black Soldier Fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens, presents a promising candidate due to its rapid life cycle, high reproductive capacity, and adaptability to diverse environments. This study proposes BSF as a novel insect model for high-throughput chemical toxicity assessments, leveraging its locomotion behavior activity as a sensitive and quantifiable endpoint. Among all toxicity assay, behavioral assessment considered one of the assay with high potential since it is highly responsive to environmental stressors, including chemical exposure, and can be rapidly and accurately measured using automated tracking systems. Preliminary result showed that BSF larvae provide a rather active locomotion activity compare to other insect like yellow mealworm, which practical on comparing any compromised locomotion activity caused by any compound. Utilizing behavioral assay, BSF larvae then exposed to 30 chosen pesticides to assess their toxicity. Majority of pesticides showed that they can affect locomotion activity of BSF by reducing their total distance travelled. Moreover, these pesticides demonstrate severe effect on other endpoint like fractal dimension, entropy, and time spent in center area. Fipronil showed the most severe effect to BSF larvae compare to the other pesticides tested. RNASeq was done to further analyze the mechanism behind the BSF larvae altered behavioral activity based on molecular basis. Transcriptome profiling showed broad transcriptional reprogramming on treated BSF larvae, which in line with the behavioral results. Overall, BSF larvae exhibit a promising result as animal model, especially for the environmental toxicity assessment since their strong tolerance to environmental waste. Establishing BSF as a new insect model for chemical toxicity assessment holds significant potential for advancing environmental monitoring, chemical safety evaluation, and sustainable toxicology research.