Nontarget Effects of Host-Specific Biocontrols: Direct and Indirect Effects of Biocontrols that Subsidize Native Consumers

宿主特异性生物防治的非目标效应：补贴本土消费者的生物防治的直接和间接影响

• 批准号: 0236061
• 负责人: Ragan Callaway
• 金额: $ 29.43万
• 依托单位: University of Montana
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-03-01 至 2008-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0236061&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Nontarget; Effects; Host; Specific; Biocontrols

The indirect effects of consumers in food webs are known to be important in ecological systems, but this knowledge has not been well integrated into applied fields such as weed control by biological agents. The introduction of exotic insects as biological control agents is an increasingly common strategy employed for the control of invasive plants and is thought to be ecologically safe so long as the control agents are host-specific. However, even host-specific agents may be consumed by native species and so impact the rest of the food web. This research will examine the indirect effects of an exotic gall fly, introduced to control an invasive grass species, on populations of deer mice that are key predators of insects and seeds in many western North American grasslands, and are the primary vectors for the Sin Nombre hantavirus, which causes the deadly hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in humans. Research goals are to conduct a perturbation experiment by removing gall flies from grassland plots in order to quantify the direct effect of gall fly subsidies on deer mouse populations, and measure indirect effects, which include the prevalence of the hantavirus, seed predation, germination and recruitment of native plants, and abundance of native insects. This research will advance the field of biological control by providing a means of more effectively filtering potentially hazardous insects from biocontrol programs. Additionally, hantavirus information will be disseminated to regional health authorities to help develop management guidelines to reduce human health risks associated with gall fly-mediated increases in the prevalence of hantavirus.

消费者在食物网中的间接影响在生态系统中是重要的，但这方面的知识还没有很好地整合到应用领域，如杂草控制的生物制剂。 引入外来昆虫作为生物防治剂是防治入侵植物的一种越来越普遍的策略，并且只要防治剂是宿主特异性的，就被认为是生态安全的。 然而，即使是宿主特异性因子也可能被本地物种消耗，从而影响食物网的其余部分。 这项研究将研究一种外来的瘿蝇的间接影响，引入控制入侵的草种，对鹿鼠种群的影响，鹿鼠是许多北美西部草原昆虫和种子的主要捕食者，并且是Sin Nombre汉坦病毒的主要载体，它导致人类致命的汉坦病毒肺综合征。 研究目标是进行扰动实验，从草原地块中删除瘿蝇，以量化瘿蝇补贴对鹿鼠种群的直接影响，并测量间接影响，其中包括汉坦病毒的流行，种子捕食，发芽和招聘的本地植物，和丰富的本地昆虫。 这项研究将通过提供一种更有效地从生物防治计划中过滤潜在危险昆虫的方法来推进生物防治领域。 此外，将向区域卫生当局传播汉他病毒信息，以帮助制定管理准则，减少与瘿蝇介导的汉他病毒流行率增加有关的人类健康风险。