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Background  Root-colonizing fluorescent pseudomonads are known for their excellent abilities to protect plants against soil-borne fungal pathogens. Some of these bacteria produce an insecticidal toxin (Fit) suggesting that they may exploit insect hosts as a secondary niche. However, the ecological relevance of insect toxicity and the mechanisms driving the evolution of toxin production remain puzzling.    Results  Screening a large collection of plant-associated pseudomonads for insecticidal activity and presence of the Fit toxin revealed that Fit is highly indicative of insecticidal activity and predicts that  Pseudomonas protegens  and  P. chlororaphis  are exclusive Fit producers. A comparative evolutionary analysis of Fit toxin-producing  Pseudomonas  including the insect-pathogenic bacteria  Photorhabdus  and  Xenorhadus,  which produce the Fit related Mcf toxin, showed that  fit  genes are part of a dynamic genomic region with substantial presence/absence polymorphism and local variation in GC base composition. The patchy distribution and phylogenetic incongruence of  fit  genes indicate that the Fit cluster evolved via horizontal transfer, followed by functional integration of vertically transmitted genes, generating a unique  Pseudomonas -specific insect toxin cluster.    Conclusions  Our findings suggest that multiple independent evolutionary events led to formation of at least three versions of the Mcf/Fit toxin highlighting the dynamic nature of insect toxin evolution.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1763-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Evolutionary patchwork of an insecticidal toxin shared between plant-associated pseudomonads and the insect pathogens Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus