May 14 2009
Cool Trend | Texas Using Parasitic Flies to Turn Fire Ants into Zombies
Cool Trend
If you’ve ever lived in Texas like I have, you know the problem associated with fire ants, and how painful it can be to be swarmed by them, and the numerous and painful bites and bite marks they leave on you.
Not only that, but I’ve had young livestock before that wonder onto the ant hills and get terrorized and threatened by the ants. There’s also the significant damage fire ants can do to electrical equipment, which costs Texas alone close to $1 billion yearly.
When the fire ants entered the U.S., there was no natural predator to help hold down their numbers and spreading, and that has largely held true to today.
Now Texas researchers are about to introduce a parasitic fly into the state that comes from the region of South America where the fire ants originate.
What the flies do is lay their eggs on the fire ants themselves, and the maggots hatch and begin to eat away the brain of the ant, and eventually the head falls off, and a new fly or maggot emerges and begins the attack on a new ant. Pretty cool solution.
while it’s not expected to make an immediate impact, or even guarantee success, it does have a lot of potential if the flies perform like they do in South America.
Still, it could take up to ten years before its known whether the experiment is working.
Other ant species don’t suffer the attacks from the flies, and so won’t experience the attack.
Cool Trend
