Posted on 09/18/2009 10:28:41 PM PDT by neverdem
Chemistry may help scientists improve control of invasive fire ants
A fire ant’s weapon is also its weakness. The insect’s venom attracts parasitic flies, which bring about a slow ant death that ends in decapitation, scientists report in an upcoming Naturwissenschaften.
By identifying venom alkaloids that attract the flies, researchers may be able to better monitor populations of the pests and their enemies and to design improved fire ant control strategies.
Fire ants were imported from South America in the early 20th century and, with little competition and no natural enemies, quickly became a major pest in the southeastern United States. Knowing that phorid flies were ant decapitators, scientists began releasing the flies as a biocontrol agent in the 1990s in the United States. But scientists didn’t know which chemical cues guided flies to their victim ants, and the control efforts, while successful in some areas, have not yet fully quelled the fire ant problem.
Fire ants have more than 10 glands, and which ones held the attractant wasn’t clear, says entomologist Henry Fadamiro of Auburn University in Alabama, who led the new research. Fadamiro and colleagues hooked electrodes up to the antennae of flies to investigate which of several stimuli prompted nerves to fire. By exposing the antennae to extracts from different ant glands and body parts, the researchers determined that juice from the venom glands got antennae buzzing. Fire ant venom is about 90 percent alkaloids, nitrogen-containing compounds that are often toxic. Separating the venom into its chemical components allowed the team to pinpoint specific compounds that the flies favored. Further tests, in which flies chose their favored scent, confirmed the antennae tests.
In South America, fire ant densities are one-tenth to one-fifth what they are in the United States, notes entomologist Sanford Porter, a fire ant specialist...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
I really wish that these scientists would get busy releasing these flies in earnest over the whole of North Texas. We really need a natural predator to get our fire ant population under control.
I could live with one tenth the number of ant mounds (which is typical of native South American fire ant populations, per the article).
Is there any effective method to kill fire ant mounds?
Diesel
I had a gym teacher like that.
This thread needs pictures!
Regards,
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I just bought my wife the perfume - Venom. If the flies get her can I be charged?
Napalm.
Nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure.
Ah, the flies are muslims!
Pitt vs. the Fire Ants Alert!
“Nuke it from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.”
You forgot the “dust off” then nuke it from orbit....
I think it was Aliens (the second one). It was either Sigorney or Michael Biehn (terminator) as Corporal Hicks??
Anyone know for sure? I think it has been used in other movies.
When I was a kid I wiped out a long standing red ant bed in our backyard with a magnifying glass popping individual ants. Of course, in those days one could devote the time to such a project.
Won’t work with fire ants. I’ve never seen anything like their population density. They basically are about the size of pissants, but if you disturb their beds thousands of them immediately respond to the threat. If you knock the tops off their mounds, you find the eggs directly below the surface along with thousands more fire ants guarding them. I’m not sure even napalm would work..
Amdro works usually to eliminate a mound, but it seems to me that they just move their mounds somewhere else. They really uglify a lawn.
So do moles, I have a terrible mole problem now. Have tried poison to kill their food supply.
Ever use highway flares?
Light the flare, push it into the hole and then look for smoke from other holes.
Once you seal all the holes, it is pretty deadly in there.....
Cheers,
knewshound
Sounds like some bugs need antivenom ping!!!
War Eagle!!!
Or maybe War Decapitating Fly!
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