The interplay of rodent behaviour and semiochemistry: from scientific principles to control strategies

共生啮齿动物是人类的主要害虫。它们通过破坏作物和粮食产生深远的负面影响，携带人类和动物疾病，引起过敏和哮喘，并破坏建筑环境。啮齿动物侵扰的成本很难量化，但在世界范围内，这一成本高达数十亿英镑。例如，2000年仅在美国，老鼠造成的食物损失和损害估计就高达190亿美元。在水稻种植区，啮齿动物每年造成5-17%的收获前损失：模型表明，在营养不良的国家，啮齿动物对谷物收成的损失减少5%，就可以养活全世界三分之一的营养不良人口。在建筑环境中，电缆损坏呈现出火灾和触电的重大风险，英国基础设施损坏的成本估计约为2亿英镑（2004年）。啮齿动物在大量牲畜和人类疾病（包括食源性疾病）的传播中也起着重要作用；也是居民区过敏原的重要来源，与哮喘症状有关。目前的防治战略严重依赖于广泛和不分青红皂白地使用灭鼠剂，尽管人们日益认识到需要更综合的虫害管理办法。抗凝血灭鼠剂（至少占欧洲使用灭鼠剂的90%）由于在环境中的持久性和对非目标物种的负面影响，正面临越来越大的监管压力。灭鼠剂耐药性问题和公众对人道主义的担忧日益严重。因此，迫切需要开发新的控制方法，以显著提高传统方法的效率和针对性，并开发可替代的非致命方法，以提高啮齿动物控制的有效性、可持续性和人性化。我们的目标是开发啮齿动物害虫控制的新工具和策略，基于使用气味信号（半化学物质）来操纵啮齿动物的行为。啮齿类动物非常依赖气味来进行社会交流、协调繁殖和生殖投资、在栖息地周围导航和躲避捕食者。这就提供了为控制目的而操纵这些信号的机会，这在虫害控制方面已经得到了非常成功的发展。然而，哺乳动物气味线索的复杂性和个体可变性，以及灵活和适应性反应，需要一种微妙的综合和跨学科的方法来理解信号和反应的关键组成部分，并从实用的角度建立操纵的潜力。为了实现这一目标，我们汇集了野生啮齿动物行为和化学交流、挥发性和蛋白质信息素的化学以及采用半化学介导的害虫控制策略方面的世界领先专家。该项目将重点关注家鼠和褐鼠这两种在英国和世界范围内最重要的啮齿动物，并将产生可以转化为其他啮齿动物害虫的方法。我们的具体目标是*全面了解刺激行为的气味成分，这些气味成分具有相当大的害虫控制潜力；*了解气味沉积和信号，以及它们如何随着气味年龄的变化而变化，这样我们就可以模仿它们来控制害虫，并利用它们来监测虫害；*探索如何利用哺乳动物对气味反应的典型灵活学习；*测试合成信号在半自然环境中操纵行为和繁殖关键方面的能力。一个由发展中国家虫害防治、环境卫生和食品行业代表、监管机构代表和啮齿动物有害生物科学专业知识组成的利益攸关方小组将确保适当的重点，并为相关行业提供后续部署的途径。

Commensal rodents are major pests of humankind. They have profoundly negative impacts through crop and food damage, carry human and animal diseases, cause allergy and asthma, and damage to the built environment. The costs of rodent infestations are difficult to quantify, but worldwide this runs to many billions of pounds. For example, food loss and damage caused by rats in the United States alone was estimated as $19 billion in 2000. In rice-growing regions, rodents cause annual pre-harvest losses of 5-17%: models suggest that a 5% reduction in rodent losses to the cereal harvest in undernourished countries could feed one third of all undernourished people worldwide. In the built environment, cable damage presents a significant risk of fire and electrocution, with costs of damage to infrastructure in the UK estimated around £200 million (2004). Rodents are also important in the spread of a large number of livestock and human diseases, including foodborne diseases; and contribute a significant source of allergens in residential areas that correlate with asthmatic symptoms. Current control strategies rely heavily on widespread and rather indiscriminate use of rodenticides, although the need for more integrated pest management approaches is increasingly recognized. Anticoagulant rodenticides (at least 90% of those used within Europe) are coming under increasing regulatory pressures due to persistence in the environment and negative impact on non-target species. There are growing problems of rodenticide resistance and public concern about humaneness. Thus, there are urgent needs to develop new control approaches, to significantly increase the efficiency and targeting of conventional approaches, and to develop alternative non-lethal approaches that increase the effectiveness, sustainability and humaneness of rodent control. Our goal is to develop new tools and strategies for rodent pest control, based on the use of scent signals (semiochemicals) to manipulate rodent behaviour. Rodents are critically dependent on scent cues for social communication, for the coordination of reproduction and reproductive investment, for navigation around the habitat and for predator avoidance. This provides the opportunity to manipulate such signals for control purposes, as has been developed very successfully for insect pest control. However, the complexity and individual variability of mammalian scent cues, combined with flexible and adaptive responses, demands a subtle integrated and interdisciplinary approach to understand the key components of signal and response and establish the potential for manipulation from a practical perspective. To achieve this, we bring together world-leading experts in wild rodent behaviour and chemical communication, the chemistry of volatile and protein pheromones, and the deployment of semiochemical-mediated strategies for pest control. The programme will focus on house mice and brown rats as the two most important rodent pests in the UK and worldwide, and will generate approaches that can also be translated to other rodent pest species. Our specific objectives are to * build a full understanding of the scent components that stimulate behaviours that have considerable potential for pest control; * understand scent deposits and signals and how these change with scent age, so that we can mimic them for pest control and use them to monitor infestations; * explore how to exploit the flexible learning that is typical of mammalian responses to scents; * test the ability of synthetic signals to manipulate key aspects of behaviour and reproduction in semi-natural environments. A stakeholder group comprising representatives of the pest control, environmental health and food industries, regulatory bodies, and scientific expertise of rodent pests in developing countries will ensure appropriate focus and provide pathways to the industries involved for subsequent deployment.