Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, PO Box 69040, Lincoln 7640, New Zealand.
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2020 Nov;35(11):990-1000. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2020.07.007. Epub 2020 Sep 6.
Managing vertebrate pests is a global conservation challenge given their undesirable socio-ecological impacts. Pest management often focuses on the 'average' individual, neglecting individual-level behavioural variation ('personalities') and differences in life histories. These differences affect pest impacts and modify attraction to, or avoidance of, sensory cues. Strategies targeting the average individual may fail to mitigate damage by 'rogues' (individuals causing disproportionate impact) or to target 'recalcitrants' (individuals avoiding standard control measures). Effective management leverages animal behaviours that relate primarily to four core motivations: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and fornication. Management success could be greatly increased by identifying and exploiting individual variation in motivations. We provide explicit suggestions for cue-based tools to manipulate these four motivators, thereby improving pest management outcomes.
管理脊椎动物害虫是一个全球性的保护挑战,因为它们会产生不良的社会生态影响。害虫管理通常侧重于“平均”个体,而忽略了个体水平的行为变化(“个性”)和生活史的差异。这些差异会影响害虫的影响,并改变对感官线索的吸引力或回避。针对平均个体的策略可能无法减轻“恶棍”(造成不成比例影响的个体)造成的损害,也无法针对“顽固分子”(逃避标准控制措施的个体)。有效的管理利用了与四个核心动机主要相关的动物行为:进食、逃离、战斗和交配。通过识别和利用动机的个体差异,可以极大地提高管理的成功率。我们提供了基于线索的工具的明确建议,以操纵这四个动机,从而改善害虫管理的结果。