International spotlight on rodent management—a marriage of basic and applied research

(L-R) Dr. Lyn Hinds (Australia), Professor Zhibin Zhang (China), Dr. Singleton, Dr. Bui Ba Bong, Ambassador Tweddell, and Professor Charles Krebs (Canada) during the opening program. (Photo by F. Palis)

The 3rd International Conference on Rodent Biology and Management (ICRBM) was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, 28 August-1 September 2006. The conference was hosted by the National Institute of Plant Protection, under the chairmanship of Professor Nguyen Van Tuat. A total of 135 wildlife ecologists, behavioral biologists, natural resource managers, molecular biologists, toxicologists, and social scientists from 37 countries presented papers on rodents. These covered the management of pests and invasive species, life history strategies, conservation of endemic species, rodent-human diseases, rodents as indicators of habitat integrity, and the molecular biology of rodenticide resistance.

The conference was opened by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Vice Minister Dr. Bui Ba Bong.

Dr. Grant Singleton, rodent expert and Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC) coordinator, presented three papers that covered ecologically based management of rodent pests in Indonesia and in Bangladesh, and the need for further research on rodent-borne human diseases in Southeast Asia. He also co-authored ten other papers and posters.

A major highlight of the conference was the strong contribution by colleagues from developing countries: they presented 70 out of the total of 148 papers. Also of note was the impressive contribution by the next generation of rodent biologists. More than 25 oral and poster presentations were given by current students or those who had graduated in the past 2 years. This augurs well for the scientific future of rodent biology and management in Asia.

Plenary talks formed the backbone of the conference. Steve Belmain (UK) opened the meeting with a discussion of how social science could work with ecologically based rodent management in controlling rodent pests and in reducing disease transmission in urban settings. This was an excellent presentation of one of the main messages of the conference, that rodent ecologists working on control problems must integrate with social scientists to be effective.

Herwig Leirs (Belgium) followed with an insightful summary of our understanding of plague, a continuing public health problem around the globe. Progress in understanding the rodent-bacteria-human nexus is impressive, and predictive models are available for some regions.

Jerry Wolff (USA) continued the plenary talks with an overview of the social biology of rodents, emphasizing the detailed understanding that has been achieved of how rodents use space, and how social interactions can affect population dynamics. Harry Andreassen (Norway) followed with a detailed evaluation of how enclosures can be used to investigate landscape ecological issues that affect demography in the root vole Microtus oeconomus.

Nguyen Phu Tuan (Vietnam) in his plenary talk focused on the management of rodent damage to rice in Vietnam, a country in which rice provides 66% of the calories in the human diet. Damage to lowland irrigated rice has been increasing in Vietnam and village-level experiments with ecologically based management have been used effectively to reduce rat damage.

Lyn Hinds (Australia) followed with an overview of fertility control methods for rodents. Methods to target female fertility have great theoretical promise but achieving control in practice has proved challenging. Virally-vectored immunocontraception has proven difficult to achieve because of low transmissibility of modified viruses in rodents. Other synthetic chemicals hold promise but none have been adequately tested in the field. Fertility control could be an important tool in rodent pest management, but much more research is required to achieve this goal.

Peter Taylor (South Africa) discussed how rodent-borne diseases could be managed in poor urban communities in Durban, South Africa, at minimum cost. Toxoplasmosis and leptospirosis were the main diseases of concern, and the main progress in reducing exposure of humans to these rodent-borne diseases has been achieved by a clever integration of social science work, rodent ecology, and rodent control with break-back traps.

In the last plenary talk, Jens Jacob (Germany) discussed how knowledge of animal behavior could be used effectively in environmental management of rodents in Europe, Australia, and SE Asia. Predation risk has a strong impact on rodent habitat use and this understanding can help reduce damage to crops.

Professor Krebs, in his wrap-up of the meeting, made the point that the clever use of rodenticides must remain an important tool in rodent management. In spite of a general desire of the public to reduce the use of poisons in pest control, in most instances we are not yet able to replace these agents and manage pest problems in a satisfactory manner, particularly in urban environments. Nevertheless, the progress with ecologically based rodent management in agricultural settings in Asia and Africa is truly impressive. If there is a general message, it is that we need a varied toolbox for rodent pest problems, and no silver-bullet exists for the control of rats and mice.

Two best-paper awards for speakers from developing countries were given to Dr. Florencia Palis, IRRC postdoctoral fellow and sociocultural anthropologist, and Dr. Sudarmaji, a NARES partner with the IRRC from the Indonesian Center for Rice Research.

Grant Singleton (g.singleton@cgiar.org) and Prof. Charles Krebs

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