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Background  The ladybird beetle  Cryptolaemus montrouzieri  Mulsant, 1853 (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) is used worldwide as a biological control agent. It is a predator of various mealybug pests, but it also feeds on alternative prey and can be reared on artificial diets. Relatively little is known about the underlying genetic adaptations of its feeding habits.    Results  We report the first high-quality genome sequence for  C. montrouzieri . We found that the gene families encoding chemosensors and digestive and detoxifying enzymes among others were significantly expanded or contracted in  C. montrouzieri  in comparison to published genomes of other beetles. Comparisons of diet-specific larval development, survival and transcriptome profiling demonstrated that differentially expressed genes on unnatural diets as compared to natural prey were enriched in pathways of nutrient metabolism, indicating that the lower performance on the tested diets was caused by nutritional deficiencies. Remarkably, the  C. montrouzieri  genome also showed a significant expansion in an immune effector gene family. Some of the immune effector genes were dramatically downregulated when larvae were fed unnatural diets.    Conclusion  We suggest that the evolution of genes related to chemosensing, digestion, and detoxification but also immunity might be associated with diet adaptation of an insect predator. These findings help explain why this predatory ladybird has become a successful biological control agent and will enable the optimization of its mass rearing and use in biological control programs.    Supplementary Information  The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-021-07442-3.

Genomic insight into diet adaptation in the biological control agent Cryptolaemus montrouzieri