Red Imported Fire Ants

Yesterday, I got stung by one of these little ants:

I recognized the little bugger right away. Just to be sure, I waited until today to see if the telltale sign of a white pustule would appear at the location of the sting. Sure enough, when I woke up, there it was.

I knew the southern part of the US had a problem with fire ants (I dealt with it at my old trucking company whenever a truck had to cross from Arizona into New Mexico), but I didn't think the ants were here in the Philippines. So, being the naturally curious person that I am, I decided to look it up on the Internet.

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant:

The red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), or simply RIFA, is one of over 280 members of the widespread genus Solenopsis. Although the red imported fire ant is native to South America, it is best known in the US, Australia, Taiwan, Philippines, and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. In January 2005, several ant-hills belonging to fire ants were found in northern Hong Kong. Later, after a thorough search for the ant was conducted there, several hundred ant-hills were found in different parts of Hong Kong. There were also reports of ant hills in Macau, the former Portuguese enclave that borders the province of Guangdong. They have recently been introduced in the Philippines in July 2005 when an infested cargo plane coming from Texas (via California) arrived in Manila.

Aha! I was right! I usually have a good eye for things that I've seen before even though I usually can't remember where I've seen them. So… now I have another insect problem to deal with here in the tropics. As if the kabillion mosquitoes and other species of ants weren't enough to irritate the living daylights out of me!

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Blog Appreciation:

One of the first official blog drive-bys that I did included manzkie dot com, but I didn't include the blog in my feed reader until today. I have a lot of catching up to do.

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hari on 2007-05-09 at 12:25 pm (Reply)

At the height of summer, you usually don't get too many mosquitoes where I live. Because the temperatures are in the high 30s and low 40s. But when it's the rainy season, we get a lot of insects attracted by the lights at night time.

Apart from insects, there's a squirrel that ravages our garbage can for eatables and a rat that sneaks around the kitchen at nights. Where it comes from we have no idea.

Dick on 2007-05-09 at 12:34 pm (Reply)

I have been here since 1988 in Leyte till July 2006 and there have always been some type of fire ant here in PI.

RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2007-05-09 at 12:37 pm (Reply)

This particular species has a nasty sting, but can be extremely beneficial here, especially to the rice farmers. Other fire ants exist, and I've seen them, but this was the first time I had an encounter with this particular variety.

hari on 2007-05-09 at 1:13 pm (Reply)

I've been stung by fire ants once, when I was walking barefoot in some rural area. Horrible sting and no amount of washing with water soothed the burning sensation.

Mick on 2007-05-09 at 6:10 pm (Reply)

We had a huge outbreak of fire ants a few years back. A task force was created to eliminate the little buggers. To cover the largely effected parts of Australia is a massive job.

Since there hasn't been anything in the news for a while i assume the situation is under control. But we all know assumption is the mother of all ….

Comedy Plus on 2007-05-10 at 2:23 am (Reply)

Oh these hurt really badly. I don't like them at all. There is a reason they call them "fire" ants.

ian nicolson on 2007-05-10 at 7:47 am (Reply)

RT, Mick . . . the Brisbane red imported fire ant Eradication Program is still going well, despite the size of the overall infestation becoming more apparent over the six years the effort has been running.

We're down to the last few nests now - each hidden somewhere cryptic in 80,000 hectares of SEQ, which makes finding the pest as tricky as the proverbial needle - but there's no way around it, if we (public and Program staff) don't find them all we'll still be stuck with them for good.

For the latest news on an A$195m dollar 8-year Program designed to deliver what has never been achieved anywhere in the world before (the complete eradication of this tramp ant pest once established across a large area), click http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/fireants/

ian

Mick on 2007-05-10 at 8:38 am (Reply)

Thanks for the info Ian!

It is a massive area and i always imagined that it would be tricky to get every single last nest, as they could be spread far and wide, and in some hard to reach areas. It is indeed a large project to undertake.

ian on 2007-05-11 at 8:56 am (Reply)

Mick,

It's nothing less than massive. These ants are a worthy enemy in military terms - they have a better chance of beating us than anything else we have tried to eradicate since the rabbit or the cane toad.

The US spent tens of millions and massively damaged the ecology of the entire US South East during the Sixties by spraying Mirex and other contact insecticides from the air to try to control RIFA.

The ant currently dominates 320 million hectares of the 13 US states where eradication weas attempted and is still pushing outward year by year.

Australia is using a different and far less damaging approach using targeted baits aand the Program has killed an estimated 99 percent plus of the RIFA in SEQ so far (found or un-found) but we probably got the problem from just one queen sneaking in, so one queen left to breed is equally bad news . . .

Jaki from squirrel feeders on 2008-06-21 at 12:21 pm (Reply)

I'm in Canada and thankfully we don't have these pests. I guess fire ants and snow don't mix well.

Jaki's last blog post… Brome Bird Feeder Squirrel Proof

An American Living in the Philippines

Red Imported Fire Ants