Fire Ant Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Fire Ant Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Solenopsis invicta, more commonly referred to as fire ants, are a particularly devastating invasive species to the southeastern United States. First introduced in the 1930s to Mobile, Alabama, the ants probably arrived via cargo ships from Brazil or Argentina. Since the 1930s, fire ants have spread to almost the entire southern United States, ranging from Florida north to Maryland and west to Texas, including Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. More recently, fire ants have been discovered in California, southern China, Australia, and the Philippines.

Fire ants are typically more aggressive than native ant species, and swarm when disturbed. Although human death due to fire ant stings is extremely rare, swarming fire ants do kill small mammals and birds, particularly ground-nesting species, and can totally eliminate some species of birds from an area. In addition, fire ants have had an enormous impact on nonant arthropod diversity, in some cases reducing species diversity by 30 percent.

As fire ants have adjusted to their new environments, they have undergone several competitive adaptations. Because populations of ants are no longer limited by native pathogens and competitors, colonies of fire ants are larger in the southern United States than in Argentina. Fire ants favor disturbed habitats, such as agricultural fields, suburban developments, or other environments characterized by ecological alteration, where native species are under stress. Because of their aggression and lack of controlling predators, pathogens, or competitors, fire ants have devastated native ant communities in the southeastern United States. In Texas, for example, fire ants were found to have diminished native ant species diversity by 70 percent, and to have limited the total number of native ant individuals to 10 percent of their former levels. Native ants were able to survive in pockets of undisturbed and uninvaded habitats; no ant extinctions are documented as a result of the depredations of invasive fire ants.

Research has focused on controlling fire ant populations through insecticides or the introduction of species-specific South American biological controls, such as a microsporidian protozoan (Thelohania solenopsae) or the fungus Beauveria bassiana. In addition, two Pseudacteon flies, which parasitize Solenopsis ants, have been introduced into the southern United States: these flies lay eggs in the heads of worker ants, the larvae of which ultimately decapitate the ant. Because the Pseudacteon flies only affect worker ants, they serve as a limiting factor on the growth and size of fire ant colonies, and will not eliminate the species from the United States. The use and introduction of nonnative biological agents to control invasive species should be cautioned, however, as numerous cases of drastic and damaging consequences with this technique can be identified (mosquito fish and cane toads in Australia and parasitic flies for gypsy moths in the eastern United States). Efforts to control fire ants through pesticide and chemical insecticide application have impacts on freshwater systems and wetlands, as well as on other insects harmed by the chemicals.

Fire ants have caused economic damage as well. In Texas alone, fire ants are estimated to cost $1.2 billion yearly in health costs, management activities, agricultural losses, and property destruction. Fire ants even represent the leading cause of electrical shorts in traffic lights, as they chew through electrical insulation.

Bibliography:

A. Mooney and E.E. Cleland, “The Evolutionary Impact of Invasive Species,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (v.98/10, 2001);
B. Vinson, “Biological Control Program: Augmentation Biological Control of the IRA Utilizing Native Species,” Texas Imported Fire Ant Research and Management Project (2001).