Re: OT: Fire Ants-Update

Bill Shear wrote:
> 
> >Fire ants (despite constant swollen knuckles) are beneficial in several
> >ways. On our farm we have:
> >       1) no slugs or snails
> >       2) no grasshoppers
> >       3) no catepillars
> >
> 
> A colleague and I have been doing a series of papers on the terrestrial
> arthropods of the Galapagos Islands (he does the collecting; I've never
> been there).  He's found that the imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta has
> virtually wiped out the soil and litter fauna in the Galapagos lowlands.
> 
> E.O. Wilson and ant expert Bill Brown (Cornell U.) correctly referred to
> the fire ant problem as the Vietnam of entomology.  Literally tons of
> highly toxic pesticides have been sprayed over much of the SE by the feddle
> gummint with very  little effect on the ants.  However, many native
> insects, some of them beneficial to agriculture, were seriously reduced,
> and there are documented cases of serious human health problems as a
> result.  Mass technological methods are not appropriate to deal with the
> problem (though great for the revenues of the agrichemical companies that
> run the US Dept of Agriculture).  Spot treatment where the problem is
> severe seems to be best.
> 
> Don't know if this works (the fire ant has only been reported a few times
> from extreme SE Virginia) but someone in Alabama told me that it is
> possible to get rid of fire ants by taking a shovel full of one mound and
> dumping it on another.  Supposedly this starts a war among the ants in
> which one of the mounds will be wiped out by the other.  Keep doing this
> until you have just one mound, then destroy it with hot soapy water.
> Sounds too good to be true.
> 
> We are just now becoming aware of the real dangers of pesticides--that some
> of them mimic mammalian hormones and can disrupt our development and
> reproduction.  A group of scientists has recently advised that percieved
> "benefits" of pesticides not be taken into account when assessing their
> value; ANY health hazard should be deemed unacceptable in this process.  I
> don't necessarily agree but it is interesting that this viewpoint is now
> becoming highly respectable.
> 
> Two books to follow up on this:  OUR CHILDRENS TOXIC LEGACY:HOW SCIENCE AND
> LAW FAIL TO PROTECT US FROM PESTICIDES by John Wargo, Yale U. Press, 1996,
> and PEST MANAGEMENT AT THE CROSSROADS by C.M. Benbrook et al, Consumers
> Union, 1996.  See the reviews in AMERICAN SCIENTIST for March, 1997, p. 195.
> 
> Bill Shear
> Department of Biology
> Hampden-Sydney College
> Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
> (804)223-6172
> FAX (804)223-6374
> email<bills@tiger.hsc.edu>

Bill:

The only problem with that, is that they have found that in order to
survive, the fire ants are now "sharing" areas.  You can look at an acre
of land and now see mounds as close as three feet to each other.  Each
has a queen.  This seems to be their way of protecting themselves.  If
one queen is killed, they simply go to the other until they get their
own again.

You don't always see their mounds either.  They don't always go above
ground level, because of the dry ground, but, when it rains for two or
more days, you can literally watch them pop up.

The Discovery Channel did a study on them.  Made me want to go find an
Aardvark.  Anyone got one for hire?  I promise to feed it well.

Diana Winship
Richardson, Tx where the tornados just missed us, but not our neighbors 
south of us.
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