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

共栖啮齿动物是人类的主要害虫。它们通过对农作物和食物的破坏产生深远的负面影响，传播人类和动物疾病，导致过敏和哮喘，并对建筑环境造成破坏。鼠患造成的损失很难量化，但在全球范围内，这一损失高达数十亿英镑。例如，2000年，仅在美国，老鼠造成的食物损失和损害估计就达190亿美元。在水稻种植区，啮齿动物每年造成5-17%的收割前损失：模型表明，在营养不良的国家，由于谷物收获而造成的啮齿动物损失减少5%，就可以养活全球三分之一的营养不良人口。在建筑环境中，电缆损坏是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GB(2004年)。啮齿动物在包括食源性疾病在内的大量家畜和人类疾病的传播中也起着重要作用；在与哮喘症状相关的居民区，啮齿动物也是过敏原的重要来源。目前的防治战略在很大程度上依赖于广泛和不分青红皂白地使用灭鼠剂，尽管人们越来越认识到需要更综合的虫害管理办法。由于环境的持久性和对非目标物种的负面影响，抗凝血灭鼠剂(至少90%在欧洲使用的灭鼠剂)正面临越来越大的监管压力。杀鼠剂抗药性的问题越来越多，公众对人性的担忧也越来越多。因此，迫切需要开发新的控制方法，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性方法，以提高灭鼠的有效性、可持续性和人性化。我们的目标是开发新的工具和策略来控制啮齿动物的害虫，基于使用气味信号(信号化学物质)来操纵啮齿动物的行为。啮齿动物严重依赖气味线索进行社会交流，协调繁殖和生殖投资，在栖息地周围导航，以及躲避捕食者。这提供了为了控制目的而操纵这种信号的机会，这种信号已经非常成功地用于害虫控制。然而，哺乳动物气味线索的复杂性和个体多样性，加上灵活和适应性的反应，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，并从实用的角度确定操纵的可能性。为了实现这一目标，我们汇集了世界领先的专家，包括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，以及部署以信号化学为媒介的害虫控制策略。该计划将把家鼠和褐鼠作为英国和世界范围内最重要的两种啮齿动物害虫作为重点，并将产生也可以推广到其他啮齿动物有害物种的方法。我们的具体目标是*全面了解刺激有相当大潜力防治虫害的行为的气味成分；*了解气味沉积和信号，以及这些信号如何随着气味年龄的变化而变化，以便我们能够模仿它们来控制虫害并利用它们来监测虫害；*探索如何利用哺乳动物对气味的典型灵活学习；*测试合成信号在半自然环境中操纵行为和繁殖的关键方面的能力。一个由发展中国家虫害防治、环境卫生和食品业、监管机构和科学专门知识的代表组成的利益攸关方小组将确保适当的重点，并为所涉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.