Integrating ecology and genetics for insect pest control

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Pest insects do enormous damage to human health (through transmission of diseases such as dengue fever and malaria) and to agriculture (through damage to crops or livestock). Insecticide resistance has been reported in many important insects and against every chemical class of insecticide and some insecticidal crops. The public and consumers increasingly want to see more sustainable methods used to control pests. The recent development of genetic transformation techniques for pest insects has opened up the possibility of employing new genetic methods to reduce the harm done by insects. The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a species-specific and non-polluting method of insect control that relies on the release of large numbers of sterile insects. Native females that mate with released sterile males have no or fewer progeny. If enough sterile males are released for a sufficient period of time, this can lead to the local elimination or suppression of the pest population. Highly successful, very large scale area-wide SIT programmes have eliminated several species, mainly of agricultural pest insects, and on very large geographical scales. New genetic technology is being developed which improves on this technique, using genetically sterile insects. This is more precise than using radiation for sterilisation, so the released insects are generally less unfit. It also allows for some useful variations, such as choosing the insect life stage at which death of the non-viable individuals occurs - it can be better to have them survive for a while through some harmless stages rather than simply not hatch from eggs. The potential release of transgenic insects has great potential benefit for crop protection, and human and animal health, by reducing or eliminating populations of harmful crop pest insects or insects that transmit human or livestock diseases. However, inevitably with any new technology, questions arise to which regulators and policy decision-makers would like answers before implementing any large plans. As well as the obvious 'will it work?' and 'will it be too expensive?' we could ask 'what will this mean for other species in the environment?' and 'what if insects evolve resistance to this new technology too?' Our project aims to find scientific answer to such questions. We will use mathematical models developed at the University of Oxford, alongside laboratory experiments and trials conducted by our project partner Oxitec Ltd, a small British biotech company that is at the leading edge of producing transgenic insects. We are both working with various regulatory and policy-making bodies around the world, and aim to produce a policy document that we hope will form a key part of the information that such stakeholders need to assess the risks and benefits of this new technology. It is important that decisions and regulations are underpinned by a good understanding of insect biology and ecology, and of relevant interactions between different elements of the complex ecological systems in which we, our livestock and crops, and those insects currently coexist.