The Colorado potato beetle has evolved resistance to more than 50 different kinds of insecticides, making the insect a "super pest" that wreaks havoc on potatoes around the world.

New research finds that the beetle achieved this feat largely by turning to a deep pool of diversity within its genome, which allowed different populations across the U.S. to quickly evolve resistance to nearly anything humans have thrown at it. The pest's wealth of diversity and arsenal of existing resistance genes will likely make it hard to control in the future, regardless of what new insecticides researchers develop. But the new understanding of the pest's genomic resources could help scientists design management systems that keep it in check.