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.
post#11 ping
LulaBelle is a fly dog too!
Yeah, might be a problem of unintended consequences. Have they checked to see if there are any natural predators for the fly, or what other damage the fly might cause if they proliferate?
I have used 'instant grits'. They take those grits into the mound within hours. It takes about two weeks to see the results, but the ants treated thusly do disappear. The trouble with grits this year is too much rain. The grits must stay dry until they store them up.
Right, DDT doesn't work too well on ants. You need Chlordane.
Just moved to the north after being in TX for 10 years. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to walk on lawn without a care! Such a simple pleasure!
Yep..the doggie in the pic has that same goofy look Lu gets.
They are all crazy (including mine).
Yeah, and God assorted all the bones of the dinosaurs in chronological order to fool scientists into thinking evolution was true.
God is a heck of a practical joker.
Does yours get that goofy look too? Mine does!
What is it with that goofy look? With mine it generally means she's about to embark on a round of "orbiting" or "butt tucking" - i.e. run madly in circles with her hindquarters tucked under, her eyes rolling, and her tongue hanging out.
Why do they do it?
now they have to find something to get those pesky killer bees...
Maybe we can make these little flies that go into a building and attack the terrorists...
Does yours lie on her back doing Pilates-like stretches?
Her stretch routine is when standing, if you rub/scratch her flanks, she'll take one hind leg and stretch it straight out behind in midair and hold it there until you stop scratching. It looks like a ballet dancer doing an arabesque. Well, sort of, if you had a ballet dancer with four legs and brown fur . . . I've never done Pilates, so I'm not sure what that sort of stretch looks like.
LulaBelle also has a stretch when she's getting off the sofa. She puts her front legs down on the floor and stretches her entire body with her back legs still on the sofa.
Totally goofy.
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