When crazy ants come to Texas, they destroy local insects and lizards, drive away birds, and even blind baby rabbits.
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have good news: A naturally occurring fungus-like pathogen can be used to reverse their rampant spread across the southeastern United States, where they have wreaked havoc for the past 20 years.
The findings were described in a journal.
Edward LeBrun told Agence France-Presse that the fungus had already driven some of the invaders to extinction and would soon be tested to see if it could be stopped.
There is a tawny crazy ant. Edward LeBrun is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
tawny crazy ants are native to Argentina and Brazil and came to the United States via ships.
They are called crazy because of their chaotic movements, unlike the orderly marches of their cousins.
They don't have a venomous bite of fire ants, but they do have formic acid that shields them against fire ants venom, and incapacitating native animals.
LeBrun described an apocalyptic river of ants swarming trees at a site he visited at the Estero Llano Grande State Park, which had lost native ants, insects, scorpions, and snakes.
LeBrun said that they are miserable to live with and are destroying the environment. The shorts in the electrical systems are caused by the ants.
There is a crazy ant in Argentina. The University of Texas at Austin.
Pesticides are toxic and slow their progress, leading to snowdrift piles of dead ants that have to be cleared, and the ants eventually break through.
About eight years ago, LeBrun and one of his co-authors noticed that some crazy ants they had collected in Florida had large abdomens that were swollen with fat.
The scientists found a new type of fungal pathogen when they looked inside their bodies.
Microsporidians hijack an insect's fat cells and turn them into spore factories.
Maybe the pathogen came from South America or another insect.
The team found it all over Texas. 60 percent of the populations went extinct after they observed 15 populations for eight years.
The team placed hot dogs around the exit chambers of a box to entice the two groups of ants to mingle, as part of an experiment at a state park.
The crazy ants form colonies that don't fight each other for territory. It is a great advantage to swarm new areas, but it is also their biggest weakness since it allowed the pathogen to spread.
The test drove the crazy ant population at the state park down to zero within a few years. Larvae that were tended by worker ants were more vulnerable.
LeBrun explained that the good news was that a pathogen of natural origin was targeting the invaders, limiting their ability to steamroll the local ecosystems.
Scientists can spread the pathogen faster to kill the crazy ants.
He warned that the process was labor intensive and not something that could be done in a day.
The team will be testing their new approach at Texas habitats this spring.
Agence France-Presse
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