Description du projet
Entrer dans la tête des insectes envahissants
Les espèces d’insectes envahissants sont souvent responsables de dommages écologiques et économiques, car elles portent atteinte aux cultures et aux moyens de subsistance. Les fourmis envahissantes peuvent s’avérer particulièrement destructrices pour les écosystèmes, et la lutte est presque vaine. Les solutions traditionnelles, comme la pulvérisation de poison, sont inefficaces car les fourmis sont à l’abri dans leur fourmilière, et les appâts empoisonnés portent rarement leur fruit, sans doute parce que les fourmis apprennent à les éviter. Le projet COGNITIVE CONTROL, financé par l’UE, cherche à élaborer de nouvelles approches de lutte contre les insectes envahissants en utilisant des méthodes de pointe qui exploitent leurs capacités cognitives. Il adaptera les techniques de psychologie du consommateur à la manipulation des fourmis, et perturbera leur immunité comportementale grâce à des substances chimiques neuroactives. L’objectif final de COGNITIVE CONTROL est de proposer des approches innovantes dans la lutte contre les espèces exotiques envahissantes.
Objectif
The aim of COGNITIVE CONTROL is to gain fundamental insights into individual and collective cognition and apply them to the emerging global challenge of invasive animal control. Invasive ants are ecologically devastating, economically damaging, and almost impossible to control. Ants are protected physically and by social immunity. However, their cognitive abilities are almost universally ignored, and offer novel angles of attack. Applying behavioural economic and psychological concepts, I will open the new field of Cognitive Control of invasive animals.
In Work Package 1 I will use microeconomic tools to gain unprecedented insights into insect preference structures. Individual choice will be steered using behavioural economic and cognitive interventions. Psychological effects, such as conditioned taste aversion, which may cripple current alien species management, will be tested and overcome. Finally, I will use neuroactives (e.g. caffeine) to improve learning and manipulate preference. In WP2 I will take the WP1 manipulations on to the colony level to gain deep insights into collective cognition. By tracing trophallactic networks I will broaden our understanding of social immunity, which protects ant colonies from attack, and learn to disrupt it. In WP3, I will translate our results into field interventions. These will be tested in buildings with an industrial partner, and in natural environments to combat a damaging invasive ant infestation. Finally, in WP4, we will ask whether behavioural economic manipulations are already being deployed in the natural world, by plants attempting to manipulate their pollinators.
Ignoring cognition has left a critical knowledge gap in invasive species control. This project brings comparative psychology and behavioural economics to conservation, and will establish Europe as a major player in invasive ant control. The interdisciplinary approach will yield innovative insights into decision making in insects, by offering new conceptual frameworks. Introducing cognition to manipulate preferences will revolutionize invasive species control worldwide. Introducing behavioural economics to an understanding of plant-pollinator interactions will force us reassess previously-held assumptions about the mutualistic nature of plant communication.
Champ scientifique
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Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
93053 Regensburg
Allemagne