Posted on 11/30/2004 3:53:38 AM PST by ovrtaxt
TAMPA - Someday, maybe in your back yard, a fire ant will be toiling, lugging a grain of sand from the mound. Happy as an ant can be.
Then it feels a dart of discomfort, over in a tenth of a second, and knows something is wrong.
Its legs tap the soil. It bends and twists, then it goes on doing what ants do. About three weeks later, its head falls off.
How cool is that?
``Everyone likes that part,'' said George Schneider, who is in charge of raising pinhead- size flies that can behead fire ants.
As biological administrator for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Schneider is surrogate father to thousands of phorid flies reared in a Gainesville lab.
Native to South America - same as the imported red fire ants - phorid flies evolved to use fire ant bodies as nurseries for their young.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is employing the flies to combat fire ants in 12 Southeastern states and Puerto Rico.
Scientists think the flies eventually will become established and expand their territory everywhere fire ants have spread, introducing a natural enemy the ants didn't find when they arrived in Louisiana or Alabama in the 1930s. The ants probably came in soil used as ship ballast.
Released near a fire ant mound, the flies hover, waiting to dive on their prey.
The ant senses a split second of unease when a fly deposits an egg in one of the small tubes the ant uses to breathe.
``They know something happened. They do a little dance,'' Schneider said.
The egg hatches, and the larva migrates to the ant's head. It begins eating everything inside. Once ready, it causes the head to topple off, and the larva spends two weeks in the hollow head becoming an adult. Then it flies out of the ant's mouth.
Next week, the last of about 100,000 fire ants, each the host of a fly's egg, will be released in a Sarasota County park.
The hope is they will live long and produce many fine, fire-ant-killing offspring.
``There's no doubt they'll survive. There's lots of fire ants for them,'' said Fred Santana, integrated pest management control coordinator for Sarasota County in charge of dispersing the doomed ants.
It is the second brood of phorid flies released in Sarasota County. The first, in 2002, has spread about five miles from the initial site, he said.
Off To Georgia
Flies released in the Gainesville area since 1998 have expanded into Georgia, said Phil Koehler, a University of Florida entomology professor.
``It takes a couple years for the population to become established,'' he said.
The flies are highly particular about what feeds their youngsters, with different species focusing on different size fire ants.
As much as people might like the idea of fire ant heads rolling off, the flies won't wipe out the pests. Fire ants are here to stay, Schneider said.
The flies help control the ants by knocking back the population and reducing the number of new colonies.
They also reduce the number of mounds that re-infest areas treated with insecticide.
``If you have 10 acres with one or two mounds, you probably wouldn't care, but there can be hundreds on those 10 acres. Then it becomes a problem,'' Schneider said.
Although each female fly can lay 150 to 200 eggs, that won't put much of a dent in a mound with 250,000 ants. The fly's main benefit is scaring fire ants. ``They're deathly afraid of them,'' Santana said.
When the flies hover over a mound, the ants prefer to cower inside and don't venture as far to forage, meaning the mound is weakened and starved. Native ants have a better chance of competing, and the mounds don't multiply.
``The flies keep them in the mound. The colony won't grow. Everything slows down,'' Schneider said.
Anyone who has stepped in a mound knows how fire ants got that name.
They bite you to hold on while punching a stinger on their tails into your skin.
They wait, crawling up your leg without attacking until one gives off a signal, and they all sting at once.
Ants With An Attitude
With larger colonies, a more aggressive attitude and no natural enemies, they displace native ant species. They are voracious feeders, attacking anything they find, including birds that nest on the ground, young snakes and turtles that hatch in underground nests. They even kill young citrus trees by stripping bark from the trunk.
``They're a big problem for livestock,'' Schneider said.
Especially vulnerable are newborn goats and sheep that tend to remain in one place, unlike calves and foals that follow the mother. ``They can be literally killed,'' Schneider said.
Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (352) 544-5214.
You'll probably dig this.
Great news for the South! I only hope the proliferation of the fly won't create another eco-problem, but fire ants are a HUGE problem down south...
A Good Thing.
That's the worst part. Stealth bastards...
"Phorid Fly Hordes have stuned my beeber!"
"Remain clam..."
"How can you seriesly expect me to remain clam at a time like this?"
"Hugh ganags of epopel are working on this as we speak. Now go Flush the Johns."
One of my earliest memories is of sitting on a red ant hill at a picnic...
Help me, help me!!
..a classic line from THE FLY. (1958?) :))
A fly? Bring it on. Here in Texas a MOAB could not clean my yard of them.
AGREE. ...The Fly (remake), better F/X, lousy cast...The Fly (Orig.), better all around.
As much as I hate fire ants, introducing a non-native species rarely works.
Phorid fly (upper right) prepares to conduct jihad on fire ant.
We live on 10 acres in Texas. Amdro works the best for us. We just sprinkle it on all the mounds in the spring and that takes care of 90% of the mounds. When a few new ones come up, we promptly us the Amdro again. We still have a couple dozen at any given time, but it really has helped. You gotta stay after the little devils. I work outside alot and I usually get bit several times a year.
KEWL!!! JIHAD!!! :))
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