Ants can particularly make for harmful pests, infesting human homes and reducing crop yields. The damage caused by ants and the efforts to mitigate the damage are hugely costly. Broad-spectrum insecticides are used most commonly; however, due to their negative side effects, there is increasing interest in nontoxic alternatives. One promising commercially available alternative is 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde, which is naturally produced by various arthropods as a means of chemical defense and effectively repels ants. Here we conduct a structure–activity relationship investigation, testing how different chemical modifications alter the repellence of 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde. We find that 2-methoxybenzaldehyde is considerably more effective than 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde at repelling the common black garden ant, Lasius niger. We next compare the most effective repellent chemicals against 4 particularly harmful ant species to confirm that the results obtained with L. niger are general to ants and that our results are relevant to mitigate the costs of ant damage.

中文翻译：

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2-甲氧基苯甲醛有效驱除蚂蚁

蚂蚁尤其会滋生有害害虫，侵扰人类家园并降低农作物产量。蚂蚁造成的损害以及减轻损害的努力代价高昂。最常用的是广谱杀虫剂；然而，由于其负面影响，人们对无毒替代品越来越感兴趣。一种有前景的市售替代品是 2-羟基苯甲醛，它是各种节肢动物天然产生的化学防御手段，可有效驱除蚂蚁。在这里，我们进行了构效关系研究，测试不同的化学修饰如何改变 2-羟基苯甲醛的排斥性。我们发现 2-甲氧基苯甲醛在驱除常见的黑花园蚂蚁（Lasius niger）方面比 2-羟基苯甲醛更有效。接下来，我们将最有效的驱避化学品与 4 种特别有害的蚂蚁物种进行比较，以确认黑乳杆菌获得的结果对于蚂蚁来说是通用的，并且我们的结果与减轻蚂蚁损害的成本相关。