Fire ants' natural enemies
After reading about Texas trying to fight fire ants with a natural predator, I thought it only fair to do a little research myself.
There are natural ways to kill fire ants, but neither has been practiced to their full extent. Thelohania is a microbial pathogen which affects the queen the most. The abdomen of the queen becomes smaller and develops cysts, which causes fewer eggs. A diseased colony becomes weak and cannot fend off other colonies. The great thing about other colonies taking over is that they too become diseased. However, this practice does not happen on a large scale. There are quite a few places in the South that have put into practice the use of thelohania. For more information, go to http://fireant.ifas.ufl.edu/disease.htm.
The second natural killer of fire ants is the phorid fly. The female phorid fly injects an egg into the head of a fire ant and 10 days later the egg hatches. Once hatched, the phorid fly eats the inside of the fire ant and the head of the fire ant falls off. So one phorid fly takes out one fire ant.
The long term effect is that fire ants become worried about phorid flies so the fire ant no longer forages for food as much; thus causing a dwindling colony. The problem with this is that the phorid fly is only efficient in South America because of the number of species of phorid flies. In the United States, we have too few species of phorid fly and they have not yet been effective. For more information on the phorid fly and its use as a natural predator, check out http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~gilbert/research/fireants/fireant.html.
So with Texas looking to invest in phorid flies, I can only hope they are looking to import a wide variety of phorid flies in order to have any effect on our own imported fire ants. And if you’re not a phorid fly farmer, your best bet is to treat with a fire ant killer in tandem with your neighbors. Try the Over ‘n Out Two-Step Method to help you with these pesky insects. It’s a proven combination, using a fast-acting individual mound treatment, followed by a sweeping broadcast treatment. More later!
