Integrating ecology and genetics for insect pest control

害虫对人类健康（通过传播登革热和疟疾等疾病）和农业（通过损害作物或牲畜）造成巨大损害。据报道，许多重要昆虫以及对每一类杀虫剂和某些杀虫作物都具有抗药性。公众和消费者越来越希望看到更可持续的方法来控制害虫。近年来害虫遗传转化技术的发展为利用新的遗传方法减少害虫危害开辟了可能性。昆虫不育技术（Sterile Insect Technique， SIT）是一种依赖于大量释放不育昆虫的、具有物种特异性的、无污染的昆虫防治方法。与被释放的不育雄性交配的本地雌性没有或更少的后代。如果在足够的时间内释放足够的不育雄虫，这可以导致局部消灭或抑制害虫种群。非常成功的、非常大规模的全区域生物多样性技术方案在很大的地理范围内消灭了几种主要是农业害虫的物种。新的基因技术正在开发中，它改进了这一技术，使用基因不育的昆虫。这比使用辐射消毒更精确，因此释放出来的昆虫通常不那么不适合。它也允许一些有用的变化，比如选择昆虫的生命阶段，在这个阶段，无法生存的个体会死亡——让它们在一些无害的阶段存活一段时间，而不是简单地从卵中孵化出来。转基因昆虫的潜在释放通过减少或消除有害作物害虫或传播人类或牲畜疾病的昆虫种群，对作物保护以及人类和动物健康具有巨大的潜在益处。然而，对于任何新技术，不可避免地会出现一些问题，监管机构和政策决策者希望在实施任何大型计划之前得到答案。除了显而易见的“它会奏效吗？”和“会不会太贵？”我们可能会问，这对环境中的其他物种意味着什么？以及“如果昆虫也进化出对这项新技术的抵抗力怎么办？”我们的项目旨在为这些问题找到科学的答案。我们将使用牛津大学开发的数学模型，以及我们的项目合作伙伴Oxitec有限公司进行的实验室实验和试验。Oxitec有限公司是一家小型英国生物技术公司，在生产转基因昆虫方面处于领先地位。我们正在与世界各地的各种监管和政策制定机构合作，旨在制定一份政策文件，我们希望该文件将成为这些利益相关者评估这项新技术的风险和收益所需信息的关键部分。重要的是，决策和法规必须以对昆虫生物学和生态学的良好理解为基础，以及对我们、我们的牲畜和作物以及这些昆虫目前共存的复杂生态系统中不同要素之间的相关相互作用的良好理解为基础。

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.