Invading hordes of crazy ants may have finally met their kryptonite:
When tawny crazy ants move into a new area, the invasive species is like an ecological wrecking ball—driving out native insects and small animals and causing major headaches for homeowners. But scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have good news, as they have demonstrated how to use a naturally occurring fungus to crush local populations of crazy ants. They describe their work this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"I think it has a lot of potential for the protection of sensitive habitats with endangered species or areas of high conservation value," said Edward LeBrun, a research scientist with the Texas Invasive Species Research Program at Brackenridge Field Laboratory and lead author of the study.
In some parts of Texas, homes have been overrun by ants that swarm breaker boxes, AC units, sewage pumps and other electrical devices, causing shorts and other damage. Natives of South America, tawny crazy ants have raised alarm bells as they've spread across the southeastern U.S. during the past 20 years. The idea for using the fungal pathogen came from observing wild populations of crazy ants becoming infected and collapsing without human intervention.
"This doesn't mean crazy ants will disappear," LeBrun said. "It's impossible to predict how long it will take for the lightning bolt to strike and the pathogen to infect any one crazy ant population. But it's a big relief because it means these populations appear to have a lifespan."
Other study authors are Rob Plowes and Lawrence Gilbert at Brackenridge Field Laboratory, and Melissa Jones formerly of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
[...] Using crazy ants they had collected from other sites already infected with the microsporidian pathogen, the researchers put infected ants in nest boxes near crazy ant nesting sites in the state park. They placed hot dogs around the exit chambers to attract the local ants and merge the two populations. The experiment worked spectacularly. In the first year, the disease spread to the entire crazy ant population in Estero. Within two years, their numbers plunged. Now, they are nonexistent and native species are returning to the area. The researchers have since eradicated a second crazy ant population at another site in the area of Convict Hill in Austin.
The researchers plan to test their new biocontrol approach this spring in other sensitive Texas habitats infested with crazy ants.
Journal Reference:
Edward G. LeBrun, Melissa Jones, Robert M. Plowes, Lawrence E. Gilbert, Pathogen-mediated natural and manipulated population collapse in an invasive social insect, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114558119)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @08:27PM (6 children)
... because every control ever via introducing a 'natural' solution has been so successful /s
I'm predict a zombie fungus making the leap to humans:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants [nationalgeographic.com]
(Score: 1) by meiao on Wednesday March 30 2022, @08:43PM (4 children)
Nah. To get rid of the fungus you either engineer some bacteria or train rats to eat it.
Then to get rid of the bacteria/rats you...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:00PM (1 child)
... Then when wintertime rolls around, the gorilla simply freeze to death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03 2022, @01:58PM
But with global warming there will be less and less of this ”freezing” to rely on. Global warming affects everything!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @02:54AM (1 child)
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.
Then she went on to swallow a spider that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her...
she swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
but I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.
Then a bird.
Then a cat.
It goes on as long as you want, I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @05:15PM
Wait til you get to the line about the flesh-melting fungus. Bitch never had a chance.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday April 01 2022, @04:55AM
Yea.. mold problem or ant problem. I'm pretty sure which is the lesser evil here....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:05PM
We had the same problem, turned out it was thousands of colonies banding together in human skin suits to take over humanity. People always mistake them for lizards, but nope millions of ants!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:08PM (3 children)
That's badly bad engineering. And inadequate technical regulations by state. Do not blame ants for human stupidity.
What about ants in nuclear facility? Or bio weapons lab?
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:22PM (2 children)
No real argument there. But, the average consumer has no idea how or why an AC unit might be badly engineered, until the ants move in, and short it out. I lost a compressor to that. I mean, seriously, I had zero reason to ever look at it, until it didn't work anymore. I definitely told the service guy, "I want a fire-ant-proof replacement!"
And don't give the ants any ideas about bio weapons labs. They already have their own bio weapons, called formic acid!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:35PM
Concerning fire ants bio weapon,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenopsin [wikipedia.org]
We know CIA uses that.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @06:07AM
That right there? That be the story of Runaway's life. Same with his pecker. And his brain: infested with Fox News Crazy Ants. (Did you ever notice? Turker Carlsberb seems to the using digital masking to hide the antennae and mandibles. But the mandibles keep showing through.)
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:14PM
I LIKE TO LICK IT AND STICK IT!
(Score: 1) by Billy the Mountain on Wednesday March 30 2022, @09:54PM (3 children)
If you live in an area where crazy ants exist you have two solutions: 1. Learn to not be annoyed when they crawl over you all the time. 2. Move.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 30 2022, @10:30PM (2 children)
This is Texas. They don't need a ride, they need more ammo.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 31 2022, @02:17AM (1 child)
One can never have too much ammo.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @06:09AM
Only sixteen rounds of the .270, Runsaway. And only 23 rounds of the .45 ACP left. You are no survivalist prepper. You are a very sad excuse for a Russian shill.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday March 30 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)
If this is a plague of biblical proportions against Texas, then wouldn't it be wrong to try to stop it. After all, it IS TEXAS we're talking about.
What would the Texas legislature think about trying to go against the will of the almighty? Wouldn't they at minimum pass a resolution condemning it? And at worst make it illegal to try to kill the aunts?
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Thursday March 31 2022, @07:23AM
I think it is already illegal to kill aunts. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 31 2022, @12:48AM (4 children)
Now all we need are radiating cockroaches to irradiate us, then humanity will really be doomed.
I remember the scary insects of the 1970s, the killer bees. They'd escaped from some lab in Mexico, and were coming north. Used to have nightmares about it. We'd all pile into the family car and flee for our lives to Canada, while the killer bees gave chase, some catching up, boring holes through the back window and then... The End!
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday March 31 2022, @04:12AM (3 children)
actually the Africanized bees, aka "Killer bees" didn't escape from a lab.
IIRCC
The bees were created by artificially cross breeding a strain of highly aggressive African bee that produced a LOT of honey with the local bees that were mostly gentle but didn't produce a lot of honey. The idea was to create a gentle bee that produced a LOT of honey. What they got was a aggressive bee that didn't produce much honey. Yay Science!!
They were being testing in outdoor bee hives in South America, I think it was either Brasil or Argentina, Paraguay?, I don't remember which of the top of my head. The queens were prevented from leaving the hives by grates over the entrances of the hives. The queens are larger than the normal workers and the grates allowed the workers and & out but prevented the queens and drones from leaving the hive. Right around the time a new batch of queens was ready to leave the hives some worker thought it would be a good idea to remove the grates for some reason lost to time. So the queens got out and started breeding with the local populations of bees.
After that the hybrid bees started making their way North. Thankfully as time went by the constant interbreeding with the local bee populations has mellowed the bees out a lot and they are no longer seen as the threat they once were.
I'm sure the Wiki article has better info but I'll leave that to you the reader to look it up if your interested because i'm just not feeling motivated to search for it for you..
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @05:23PM
Now it's the Asian
menaceMurder Hornets coming for yer jaaaaarbs! Yikes!(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @06:25PM
So if you do your inter-species crossbreeding experiments outdoors, you can avoid the stigma of creating them "in a lab"? Seems easy to circumvent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:00PM
In Africa, those scary-scary horrorbees that are ultra-aggressive?
They're just bees. That make honey.
Don't fuck with them, because they will fuck you up.
(Interestingly, the capensis subspecies will screw up hives of the regular type for weird pheromonal reasons.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @06:41AM
1) This works on ants, bees, wasps, flies, etc. Soapy water (Dawn soap works best). Mix up a healthy dose of soap in water in a spray bottle that has some oomph to it since if you're using this on bees, you kinda want to be far away right wink, wink. Not drops worth, but like full on squirts worth of soap...like the more the merrier kind of thing. Then just spray the shit out of them. It can't be a passing misting kind of spray but more like a bath. It will kill everything. For some reason, the soap gets into their pores and either suffocates them of dissolves their outer protective layer and then the soap penetrates their bodies and kills them FAST!
2) Borax soap (can get at Walmart in a box) and sugar water. How to Make Borax Ant Killer:
Step 1 – Mix 1/3 cup borax with 1 cup sugar (mix well)
Step 2 – Slowly stir in water until you have a syrup-y consistency
Step 3 – Stir in 1/4 cup syrup (optional)
The good little worker ants will go on on their patrol and bring this tasty treat back home to the nest. Once in the nest, it kills them dead en masse. As more ants bring the stuff home, the faster it works. Read all about it here: https://boraxantkiller.com/ [boraxantkiller.com] (NOT SPAM, IT'S LEGIT)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday April 01 2022, @06:30PM (1 child)
In Clifford Simak's book "City", the long-term tendency in Earth's multispecies civilization was that the ants just slowly took over the world.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:44AM
Phase 4 [youtube.com]