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

家鼠是人类的主要害虫。它们通过破坏作物和粮食、携带人类和动物疾病、引起过敏和哮喘以及破坏建筑环境而产生深远的负面影响。啮齿动物侵扰的成本很难量化，但在世界范围内，这将达到数十亿英镑。例如，2000年，仅在美国，老鼠造成的粮食损失和破坏估计就达190亿美元。在水稻种植区，啮齿动物每年造成5 - 17%的收获前损失：模型表明，营养不良国家谷物收获时啮齿动物损失减少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，电缆损坏带来了火灾和触电的重大风险，英国基础设施的损失估计约为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）的传播中也很重要;并且是与哮喘症状相关的居民区过敏原的重要来源。目前的控制战略严重依赖广泛和相当不加区别地使用灭鼠剂，尽管人们越来越认识到需要采取更综合的虫害管理办法。由于在环境中的持久性和对非目标物种的负面影响，抗凝血杀鼠剂（至少90%在欧洲使用）正面临越来越大的监管压力。鼠药抗药性和公众对人道主义的关注问题日益严重。因此，迫切需要开发新的控制方法，以显著提高常规方法的效率和针对性，并开发替代性非致命方法，以提高啮齿动物控制的有效性、可持续性和人道性。我们的目标是开发新的工具和策略，用于啮齿动物害虫控制，基于使用气味信号（化学信息素）来操纵啮齿动物的行为。啮齿动物是严重依赖于气味线索的社会沟通，生殖和生殖投资的协调，周围的栖息地导航和捕食者回避。这提供了操纵这种信号用于控制目的的机会，如已经非常成功地开发用于昆虫害虫控制。然而，哺乳动物气味线索的复杂性和个体变异性，结合灵活和适应性的反应，需要一个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，并建立从实际的角度来看，操纵的潜力。为了实现这一目标，我们汇集了世界领先的野生啮齿动物行为和化学通讯，挥发性和蛋白质信息素的化学，以及化学信息素介导的害虫控制策略的部署专家。该计划将重点关注家鼠和棕色大鼠作为英国和全球两种最重要的啮齿动物害虫，并将产生也可以转化为其他啮齿动物害虫物种的方法。我们的具体目标是：* 建立对刺激具有相当大的害虫控制潜力的行为的气味成分的全面理解;* 了解气味沉积和信号以及这些如何随着气味年龄而变化，以便我们可以模仿它们进行害虫控制并使用它们来监测虫害;* 探索如何利用哺乳动物对气味的典型反应的灵活学习;* 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控制、环境卫生和食品行业、监管机构和啮齿动物虫害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，并为所涉行业提供随后部署的途径。

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.