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

解开掠食性黄蜂的感官秘密：开发用于管理人类世黄蜂生态系统服务的预测工具

• 批准号: NE/Y001397/1
• 负责人: Seirian Sumner
• 金额: $ 101.54万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY001397%2F1
• 关键词: Unlocking; sensory; secrets; predatory; wasps

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.

人类正在以前所未有的速度改造地球，标志着一个新时代——人类世。土地利用变化、污染物和气候变化给自然带来了诸多挑战。显然，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，而另一些物种则正在扩张并变得具有入侵性；这两种影响都会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。昆虫的感官——它们如何闻、感觉和看世界——被认为在解释这些变化中发挥着关键作用。这是因为人类世正在改变昆虫的化学、视觉和听觉环境，并破坏它们进化来做出反应的感觉机制。例如，光污染正在影响飞蛾的摄食行为，农用化学品正在扰乱蜜蜂的导航能力，空气污染物扰乱昆虫检测其配偶的性信息素以及它们授粉的植物释放的花香线索的能力；甚至温度和湿度也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如何感知环境。需要这一基础科学，以便我们能够开发预测工具来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基于自然的解决方案的作用，我们自己的食物、健康和福祉都依赖于这些解决方案取决于。我们的项目使用黄蜂作为模型系统来解决这一迫切需求。黄蜂是多种昆虫的捕食者，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（例如毛毛虫）和疾病媒介（例如苍蝇）。黄蜂已被描述的物种超过 100,000 种，还有五倍的物种尚未被发现，黄蜂是地球上最奇特的类群之一。黄蜂也是地球上最严重的入侵物种之一，造成巨大的生态和经济损失。尽管它们很重要，但我们对它们的猎物却知之甚少，更不用说它们用来捕猎猎物的感觉机制了。这很重要，因为黄蜂是大自然的害虫控制者。我们需要拥有正确的工具来确保我们保护他们的服务。实验性清除黄蜂会导致苍蝇和毛毛虫数量难以控制，从而大量毁坏农作物并威胁生态系统，这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 - 其核心是确定它们捕猎的内容和方式。我们使用创新方法来快速开发预测黄蜂猎物类型的工具。黄蜂利用气味、视觉和振动线索来检测猎物，这应该反映在从基因到感觉器官的潜在感觉机制中。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觉器官（触角、眼睛等）的形态来识别黄蜂捕猎时使用的感觉机制。我们之所以能够做到这一点，是因为黄蜂基因组测序的爆炸式增长，目前已有 270 个物种，还有更多物种正在酝酿之中，并且对大量博物馆藏品进行了高分辨率扫描。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感官特征集来预测猎物类型。如果我们能够根据现场获得的快速基因组序列来评估黄蜂的生态作用，那么最终的成功将是。该项目是一个雄心勃勃、高回报、快速的解决方案，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。