Fire Ant Awareness Week

[gatorback]

You know what time it is!  My favorite time of the year is fall because fall has one of my favorite weeks of the year......that's right kids, get ready for Fire Ant Awareness Week!

http://tamusystem.tamu.edu/systemwide/05/08/briefs/ants.html

I felt so bad when the boy helping deliver my Pottery Barn chair got ate up by fire ants at my house.  I swore I'd always promote fire ant awareness! 

Go Ants! 

[Jason]

I say nuke the little bastards!!! 

[big ben]

i've not had a run-in with fire ants.  i grew up with black and red ants that were mostly harmless.  occasionally a single one would climb aboard and bite and it'd mostly be annoying.

[jbm32206]

Oh, but you've not lived until you find yourself in the middle of a fireant bed and the bites afterward...such a joy...NOT!

[Ocklawaha]

RE:  Solenopsis invicta Buren


Marshall, Texas and Ashburn, Georgia, both celebrate the Fire Ant with it's own festival.

Y'all are baby's here, get you're selves right out in that back yard and sit down in a big ol pile of them Thar buggers! My first encounter was in the early 60's, whilst on an Easter Egg hunt with a church group in Yukon. (No that's not in Canada, it's in front of NAS, or at least is once was) I remember getting down on all fours and looking under something, after a minute or two, the leader of the attack group signaled to his troops to "Drop Stingers" and buddy, let me tell you, there ain't no running back, then or now, on the Jaguar squad, that could have caught me! Finally when I slowed down, some elders grabbed me, and spent the next 1/2 hour picking the little stingers off of my body. That was 40+ years ago and I still remember the fire, blisters and pustules.



They may indeed have been a major contributing factor to my misspent youth. For over the next 10 to 20 years, I never saw a mound of them that I didn't kick, torch with gasoline, or stuff with fireworks. Finally many years later, I was doing a book signing with "The Garden Rebel" and he was talking about a kind formula to move them out. He makes plant food and insect tea out of a cheap package of chewing tobacco, beer and a couple of drops of dish soap. Strain it well, then spray it on your plants, or the mounds. The Ants, being smarter then many humans, don't do tobacco and will promptly pack their bags and move away. No kidding!



Works for Tomato's and Roses real good too.  



Lest any of us makes too much light of this, Fire Ants kill people every year. Very young and elderly persons are most likely with nursing home residents the number one victims. They are a real and serious problem, both here and in my beloved Colombia, which is perhaps where they originated from. It is believed they came into the South via banana shipments through the port of New Orleans. They are subjects of several pages in the Military venomous anthropoid and insect handbooks.  


The "Star" of the Venomous Handbook, the Black Widow...

Bet Y'all didn't know, arthropods are among my interests, but Fire Ants are not near the fun as my onetime pets: genus Latrodectus (Black Widow). For several years I raised a colony of them in a custom built enclosure. 6% of all bite victims DIE. The Orlando Sentinel asked me, "Don't you worry about getting bit?" I told them "Hell no! But I don't intend to stick my fingers in that cage either..." Meet a clone of my little darling, "Angelique." My boys once decided to toss a big lizard into the cage so it would "Eat Daddy's spiders", it took Angelique about an hour and the lizard was history! After that, they never again messed with the widows.

Ocklawaha

[big ben]

Oh, but you've not lived until you find yourself in the middle of a fireant bed and the bites afterward...such a joy...NOT!

i guess i'll just continue not living for a while.

[Ocklawaha]

I didn't realize it at first, but this photo shows a tiny phorid fly about to land on the fire ants head. These are natural enemys that are being imported to kill off the ants. They just touch the ant and leave an egg on it, the larva eats the ant from the inside out until a new wasp emerges.
Pretty cool stuff.

AL DEPT OF AG: The phorid flies hover over the fire ant mound, then zoom in to pierce an ant's outer cuticle and deposit an egg underneath. The egg quickly hatches into a fly maggot, or larva, that moves into the ant's head. When the maggot is mature, it releases an enzyme that causes the ant's head to fall offâ€"decapitation. Using the ant's head as a safe hideaway, the fly completes its development inside.

"One female phorid fly usually contains a hundred or more torpedo-shaped eggs, so she can make multiple attacks," says Porter. Porter released thousands of the tiny flies in July 1997 in Gainesville. Since then, he's released them in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Alabama.


An enzyme released by the mature phorid fly larva decapitates its fire ant host.
(K8575-24)  "The exciting part is that the Brazilian parasitic flies released in Florida have survived for nearly 2 years. They've gone through many generations and appear to be permanently established," says Porter. "Fly populations are still growing, so it may take 1 to 2 years before they have a noticeable impact."

Ocklawaha

[jbm32206]

Oh, but you've not lived until you find yourself in the middle of a fireant bed and the bites afterward...such a joy...NOT!

i guess i'll just continue not living for a while.

If you never have the experience of fireants bites...lucky you!!

[big ben]

I didn't realize it at first, but this photo shows a tiny phorid fly about to land on the fire ants head. These are natural enemys that are being imported to kill off the ants. They just touch the ant and leave an egg on it, the larva eats the ant from the inside out until a new wasp emerges.
Pretty cool stuff.

AL DEPT OF AG: The phorid flies hover over the fire ant mound, then zoom in to pierce an ant's outer cuticle and deposit an egg underneath. The egg quickly hatches into a fly maggot, or larva, that moves into the ant's head. When the maggot is mature, it releases an enzyme that causes the ant's head to fall offâ€"decapitation. Using the ant's head as a safe hideaway, the fly completes its development inside.

"One female phorid fly usually contains a hundred or more torpedo-shaped eggs, so she can make multiple attacks," says Porter. Porter released thousands of the tiny flies in July 1997 in Gainesville. Since then, he's released them in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Alabama.


An enzyme released by the mature phorid fly larva decapitates its fire ant host.
(K8575-24)  "The exciting part is that the Brazilian parasitic flies released in Florida have survived for nearly 2 years. They've gone through many generations and appear to be permanently established," says Porter. "Fly populations are still growing, so it may take 1 to 2 years before they have a noticeable impact."

Ocklawaha

are we sure we want a non-native parasitic fly?  this seems like a bad idea at face value.

[Ocklawaha]

Yep, looks like this little bugger has been around for a while, they already have distribution in AL, MS, AR, and LA, in addition to FL. The ones here are happy to "do the fire ants" and really don't seem to do anything else??? I agree that non-native animal life is not usually a good idea (love bugs?) but since the ant is also a non-native, we have to go to their own neighborhood, to see who or what controls them. They really aren't a problem in South America, I guess because the flys are good at what they do.

Ocklawaha

[big ben]

why don't we just let loose a horde of ant-eaters.  they don't leave parasitic youngens under the skin.  i'm just worried of what they might do if all of a sudden they don't have enough ants to stick their eggs in.

[Ocklawaha]

Oh hell BigBen, this shouldn't be any problem...
City Hall and JTA are largely "headless" as it is and it doesn't seem to effect their quality of life!

Ocklawaha

[gatorback]

Hopefully we'll get a BRT system before the current admininistration's brains are eaten away by the wasp larvi ant killers?

[Jason]

I think that is the reason we are getting BRT.  The larvae are already eating their brains forcing them to makebad decisions.

[gatorback]

wow. What a great front page story. "JTA Brain Eating Wasp Larvae Force Hydrofoil Purchase".  Hey O why cant we have hydrofoils running fron say OP , julington creek, etc and downtown on the river?