Unlocking the sensory secrets of predatory wasps: towards predictive tools for managing wasps' ecosystem services in the Anthropocene

人类正在以前所未有的速度改变地球，标志着一个新纪元--人类世。土地利用变化、污染物和气候变化给自然带来了过多的挑战。很明显，昆虫受到这些挑战的深刻影响，一些物种面临全球种群数量下降，而另一些物种正在扩张并成为入侵物种；这两种影响都对人类产生严重后果，因为我们依赖昆虫提供生态系统服务。昆虫的感觉--它们如何嗅觉、感觉和观察世界--被认为在解释这些变化方面发挥了关键作用。这是因为人类世正在改变昆虫的化学、视觉和听觉环境，并扰乱它们进化而来的感觉机制。例如，光污染影响了飞蛾的取食行为，农用化学品扰乱了蜜蜂的导航能力，空气污染物扰乱了昆虫探测配偶性信息素和授粉植物释放的花朵线索的能力；甚至温度和湿度都会影响昆虫用作线索的挥发性化学物质的性质。迫切需要更好地了解昆虫是如何感知环境的。这项基础科学是必要的，以便我们能够开发预测工具，以预测人类世对昆虫感觉机制的影响，并管理和保护它们作为健康生态系统的自然解决方案的角色，我们自己的食物、健康和福祉依赖于健康生态系统。我们的项目以黄蜂为模型系统，解决了这一迫切需求。黄蜂是种类繁多的昆虫的捕食者，这使得它们对于控制自然和养殖生态系统中的昆虫种群至关重要。这包括农业害虫(如毛虫)和病媒(如苍蝇)。黄蜂是地球上最特殊的物种之一，目前已描述的物种超过10万种，还有5倍的物种尚未被发现。黄蜂也是地球上一些最严重的入侵物种，造成了巨大的生态和经济破坏。尽管它们很重要，但令人惊讶的是，我们对它们的猎物知之甚少，更不知道它们用什么感官机制来猎杀猎物。这一点很重要，因为黄蜂是大自然的害虫控制者；我们需要有正确的工具来确保我们保护它们的服务。黄蜂的试验性清除导致苍蝇和毛虫的数量难以控制，导致农作物大量死亡，并威胁到生态系统，证明了黄蜂的重要作用。我们需要一种方法来快速评估黄蜂提供的生态系统服务--在其核心，这意味着确定它们捕食什么以及如何捕食。我们使用一种创新的方法来快速跟踪工具的开发，以预测被猎物类型的黄蜂。黄蜂使用气味、视觉和振动信号来检测猎物，这应该反映在潜在的感觉机制上--从基因到感官。我们将通过寻找基因组中特定感觉功能的适应性进化迹象及其感官器官(触角、眼睛等)的形态来识别黄蜂用于狩猎的感觉机制。我们能够做到这一点，是因为黄蜂基因组测序的爆炸性增长，目前有270个物种可用，还有更多物种正在筹备中，并通过对大量博物馆藏品的高分辨率扫描。通过分析适应性感觉进化的模式，我们将首次全面了解捕食性昆虫感觉系统的进化和机制基础。然后，我们将使用这些特征来测试我们是否可以根据最小的一组感觉特征来预测猎物的类型。如果我们能从野外获得的快速基因组序列中评估黄蜂的生态作用，最终的成功将是这样的。该项目是一个雄心勃勃、高回报、快速通道的解决方案，承诺提供工具来预测和保护这些关键但被忽视的自然方面所提供的服务。

Humans are modifying the planet at a rate never experienced before, marking a new era - the Anthropocene. Land-use change, pollutants and climate change bring a plethora of challenges for nature. It is clear that insects are profoundly affected by these challenges, with some species facing global population declines, whilst others are expanding and becoming invasive; both effects have serious consequences for humans, as we rely on insects for their ecosystem services. Insect senses - how they smell, feel and see the world - are thought to play a critical role in explaining these changes. This is because the Anthropocene is altering the chemical, visual and auditory environment for insects and disrupting the sensory mechanisms they have evolved to respond to. For example, light pollution is affecting the feeding behaviour of moths, agrochemicals are disrupting the navigational abilities of bees, air pollutants disrupt the abilities of insects to detect the sex pheromones of their mates and the floral cues released by the plants they pollinate; even temperature and humidity affects the nature of volatile chemicals used as cues by insects. There is an urgent need to better understand how insects sense their environment. This basic science is required in order that we can develop predictive tools to forecast the impacts of the Anthropocene on insect sensory mechanisms, and to manage and protect their roles as nature-based solutions for healthy ecosystems, on which our own food, health and wellbeing depend.Our Project addresses this urgent need using wasps as a model system. Wasps are predators of a huge diversity of insects, making them essential for controlling insect populations in natural and farmed ecosystems. This includes agricultural pests (e.g. caterpillars) and vectors of disease (e.g. flies). With over 100,000 described species and five times more thought yet to be discovered, wasps are amongst the most speciose group in the planet. Wasps are also some of the worst invasive species on the planet, causing huge ecological and economic damage. Despite their importance, we know astonishingly little about their prey, and even less about what sensory mechanisms they use to hunt prey. This matters because wasps are nature's pest-controllers; we need to have the right tools to ensure we protect their services. Experimental removal of wasps results in unmanagable populations of flies and caterpillars which decimate crops and threaten ecosystems, demonstrating the important role of wasps. We require a means to rapidly assess the ecosystem services provided by wasps - at its core, this means identifying what and how they hunt. We use an innovative approach to fast-track the development of tools to predict the prey-type of wasps. Wasps use smells, visual and vibrational cues to detect their prey, and this should be reflected in the underlying sensory machinery - from genes to sensory organs. We will identify the sensory machinery used by wasps to hunt by looking for signs of adaptive evolution for specific sensory function in the genome and the morphology of their sensory organs (antennae, eyes, etc). We can do this due to the explosion in wasp genome sequencing, with 270 species currently available and many more in the pipeline, and with high-resolution scanning of extensive museum collections. By analysing the patterns of adaptive sensory evolution, we will provide the first comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary and mechanistic basis to sensory systems in predatory insects. We will then use these signatures to test whether we can predict prey-type based on a minimal set of sensory traits. The ultimate success would be if we can assess a wasp's ecological role from a rapid genome sequence obtained in the field. This Project is an ambitious, high-reward, fast-track solution that promises to provide the tools to predict and protect the services provided by these critical, but overlooked facets of nature.