Understanding the minds of invasive insects
Invasive insect species often cause ecological and economic damage, harming crops and livelihoods. Invasive ants can be especially damaging to ecosystems, and are nearly impossible to control. Traditional solutions, such as poison spraying, are ineffective since the ants are sheltered in their nest, and baiting with poison often fails, possibly since the ants learn to avoid them. The EU-funded COGNITIVE CONTROL project seeks to develop new approaches to control invasive insects by using cutting-edge methods to exploit their cognitive abilities. It will adapt consumer psychology techniques to manipulating the ants, as well as disrupting any behavioural immunity using neuroactive chemicals. The ultimate goal of COGNITIVE CONTROL is to provide fresh approaches in the battle against alien invasive species.
Objective
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.
