Texas Makes Zombie Fire Ants 398
eldavojohn writes "What do you do when a foreign species has been introduced to your land from another continent? Bring over the natural predator from the other continent. Scientists in Texas have introduced four kinds of phorid flies from South America to fight fire ants. These USDA approved flies dive bomb ants and lay an egg inside the ant. The maggot hatches and eats away juicy tender delicious ant brain until the ant is nothing more than a zombie that wanders around for two weeks before the head falls off and the ant dies. A couple of these flies will cause the ants to modify their behavior and this will be a very slow acting solution to curb the $1 billion in damage these ants do to Texas cattle ranches and — oddly enough — electrical equipment like circuit breakers. You may remember zombifying parasites hitting insects like cockroaches."
The Selfish Gene (Score:3, Informative)
Richard Dawkins talks about ants doing this kind of stuff in his book: The Selfish Gene.
It's an awesome book to read if you want to learn more about the world you're living in and also reasoning behind a lot of human behaviour.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Your quote:
Introducing foreign species, even to battle other foreign species /NEVER WORKS/.
I'm not sure about never but there are often unforeseen consequences. Even Looney Toons had a classic cartoon on this.
In some cases, biological pest control can have unforeseen negative results that could outweigh all benefits. For example, when the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rat population, it preyed on the endemic birds of Hawaii, especially their eggs, more often than it ate the rats.
Cane toads (Bufo marinus) were introduced to Australia in the 1930s in a failed attempt to control the cane beetle, a pest of sugar cane crops. 102 toads were obtained from Hawaii and bred in captivity to increase their numbers until they were released into the sugar cane fields of the tropic north in 1935. It was later discovered that the toads can't jump very high so they did not eat the cane beetles which stayed up on the upper stalks of the cane plants. The toads soon became very numerous and out-competed native species and became very harmful to the Australian environment, including being very toxic to would-be predators such as native snakes.
- Ref: [wikipedia.org]
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
You said:
Not animals. Insects. The distinction does matter.
Once again I will quote Wikipedia:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Mandibulata
Class: Insecta
and:
Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
People are animals too, as are insects and worms and fish and dogs and frogs.
Being a member of Animalia usually means you're an animal, but the common term animal is not universally applied to Parazoa/Porifera(sponges) even though sponges are technically part of the "Animal kingdom".
The CSIRO would disagree with you (Score:5, Informative)
After a few horrendous early bad attempts (Cane Toads for example) Australia's CSIRO (the government's research arm) has gotten very very good [csiro.au] at importing biological controls to deal with other invasive species. They now have methodologies in place that let them do so on a regular basis.
Examples include the moth that was used to eradicate Prickly Pear [sciencedirect.com], the introducing of African dung beetles to curb an explosion in flies due to agriculture, and the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus [wikipedia.org] have all been very successful.
And they've introduced no less than 5 different species (3 weevils, 2 flies and a moth) to successfully control Onopordum Thistles [csiro.au] (although the program is ongoing).
I think the rule of thumb here is that you don't solve your invasive species problems by just wandering over to their source country, picking up the first highly visible superpredator that you find, and bringing it back. (Cane Toads, Mongooses, Wolves, etc)
Re:Uh, memo to tthe USDA . . . (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, biocontrol [wikipedia.org] has worked [wikipedia.org] a few times [wikipedia.org] before. [wikipedia.org]
Obviously, the screw-up results get more press than when an introduced species does work.
-Peter Petridish
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Why were you modded +5 insightful? You're just wrong. I have to plant a wasp larva on you for trying to get away with this.
Go here and read about 20 years of successful biological control of pest insect species [ifad.org]
And they dealt with the cane toads by importing .. (Score:4, Informative)
Reminds me of cane toads.
I understand that there was an additional import used to deal with Cane Toads that isn't in the wiki article. As I heard it:
There was a problem with cattle dung. The native dung beetles didn't dispose of it. So each cow flop would lie around for years, killing off a circle of grass several feet across. Cows make a LOT of flops, so this was a serious problem
So they imported dung beetles that WOULD break up and bury cow flops. But the Cane Toad would eat them, so they didn't take hold.
Finally they found a BIG dung beetle that would use cow flops. The cane toads would eat this one, too. But it was a big hardy bug. So it would dig its way out of the toad. Problem (and toad) solved. B-)
Unfortunately there apparently aren't enough cow flops to produce a big enough population of these booby-trap-beetles to wipe out the cane toads. So the toads are still a problem.
Aust fire ant problem (Score:0, Informative)
We have had a fire ant problem here in Queensland, Australia for a few years now. It has been a big problem and quite a talking point for the Qld government (www.dpi.qld.gov.au/fireants/). But there has never been a suggestion to introduce a natural predator. I'm curious as to why they haven't. Possibly because the last time they tried using a natural predator; the cane toad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad)it backfired badly and we are now over run by the little buggers.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was saying that there must also be ants that are native to Texas and that these flies will damage their populations, in addition to the foreign fire ant populations.
Australians have a simpler solution (Score:5, Informative)
More info can be found here [abc.net.au]
Re:The CSIRO would disagree with you (Score:2, Informative)
The rabbit calicivirus was NOT introduced - it escaped the tests being done on Wardang Island.
What could possibly go wrong?
captcha: hesitant
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eh. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever read the essay, "Santaland Diaries," by David Sedaris?
No.
Have you ever watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Michael Douglas, the producer, complained to somebody that the mental patients never seem to get out of character. Somebody informed him that many of the extras on the film were recruited from an actual mental hospital.
I'm not going to mention Kramer [tv.com] here.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
I live near the University of Texas college and personally know many people involved in the research of these fly's. Many teams involved have all told me the same story; there is a toxin found exclusively inside the fire ant thorax that the fly's sense and are drawn to. They did not go into more detail that I could retain as I am not a biochemist, I simply felt I could contribute to the Slashdot community with personal knowledge that the article lacked.
Zombie RoHS Circuit Fungus (Score:5, Informative)
I, for one, fear the eventual introduction of the Taiwanese semiconductor beetle. Not only do its feeding tunnels encourage premature ion migration, it carries the fungus that causes bit rot.
Actually that fungus that causes bit rot is caused by the lack of lead in the solder that causes "whiskering". Lead kept the whiskering down in circuits; it's removal means now that many forms of electronics will simply "wear out" over time. The whiskers are little tiny cylinders of tin, a conductor, and they tend to grow on new circuits over time. http://archive.evaluationengineering.com/archive/articles/0606/0606lead-free.asp [evaluation...eering.com] has a good description and accompanying photomicrographs. Lead has been legislated out of solder by RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) acts in various countries under a variety of names.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:1, Informative)
While I agree completely with you, "Animal" is defined as a taxonomical term in biology, but also as a collective term culturally.
Hence, sometimes people distinguish between animals and fish. And other times between animals and birds. And other times between animals and lizards. And so on.
Usually, when most people use the term "animals", they mean "mammals". Unless they don't. It's supposed to be contextually intuitive what they actually mean, apparently.
The taxonomic meaning, while unambiguous, is equally arbitrary. Not that I'm criticizing; I use the term the same way that you do. I'm just explaining.
Re:Zombie RoHS Circuit Fungus (Score:3, Informative)
There are probably some types of reasonably priced types of solder that either do not use tin or have tin and are alloyed in such a way that "tin whiskers" is not an issue. Otherwise, RoHS guidelines offer exemptions for certain applications if no other substance will work or is not economical. For instance, lead is still legal in CRT picture tubes and in the solder bumps between a silicon die and its flip-chip package substrate. However, the EU will not allow one to use lead because lead-free alternatives would add a small amount to the cost of the finished product that goes to the final consumer. The threshold for an exemption is fairly high, as a totally random guess, a 25% cost increase might still be too low, and it may still depend on the item's cost though.
For comparison, while there were plenty of plumbers that were displeased with the removal and replacement of lead pipes and later lead bearing solder, indoor plumbing is still around and lead-free. These same plumbers may have complained about the added cost of having to use a soldering alloy that uses tin and antimony, but responsible plumbers did it. Pure metallic tin slowly over the course of years goes through a phase change below 58F into a brittle, crumbly, non-metallic phase, potentially resulting in the failure of the solder joint. Look up "tin pest" for more.
Re:Porky Pig tried this once. (Score:2, Informative)
I do remember that one, but it wasn't the one I originally spoke of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnRaNw1Un8 [youtube.com]
Re:What stupidity. (Score:2, Informative)
They actually got here from South America through a port in Mobile, Alabama.
And now they're more than just a Mobile, Alabama problem.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/FireantmapUSA.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Furthur reading on the RIFA (Red imported fire ant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant [wikipedia.org]
Re:What stupidity. (Score:4, Informative)
At one point these poor asteroidea were cut into pieces as a form of population control. People realized that the population was doubling. Turns out, they can regrow into separate functioning organisms.
Kinda like fantasia and mickey mouse and the brooms, y'know.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And they dealt with the cane toads by importing (Score:3, Informative)
And the best part is, if the cows get out of control, we've already got effective (and tasty) methods of dealing with that problem.
Re:What stupidity. (Score:2, Informative)
As one who has studied entomology, especially Biological Control; I am aware that there were faulty methods of evaluating suitable insects for attacking imported pests. The USDA has stricter standards now for evaluating host specificity (how likely is the critter going to pick on a native vs target insect) of a biocontrol agent (= phorid flies in this case).
True, in the case of ants, since there are so many species, foolproof bioagents can be difficult to get, but there have been successes too. I personally have worked with Cereal Leaf Beetle [unr.edu] and the complex of wasps we used to control the critters have successfully kept them in check...and kept wheat production costs down.