
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 30, 1990                   TAG: 9007310344
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIRE ANTS

FIRE ANTS are here. These aggressive insects with a potent sting that belies their small size have made their way from South America to Alabama. Now they've arrived in California and, yes, Virginia. Colonies have been found in Newport News.

So far, efforts to get rid of them have been ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. In fact, the war against the fire ant has been called the "Vietnam of entomology." Conventional tactics don't work, and the best efforts of the experts have made an already bad situation worse.

Fire ants are resistant to most chemical insecticides; they quickly adapt to the ones that work. Their social structure is evolving quickly, too, as individual colonies form huge multiqueen colonies. In short, their technology is better than ours.

Worse yet, the poisons used against them are effective against other insects that are the fire ant's natural competition. Instead of getting rid of the fire ants, the poisons simply have made it easier for the colonies to expand.

That doesn't mean efforts to get rid of the creatures should stop. Fire ants are potentially lethal to children and those allergic to insect stings. They are dangerous to livestock and wildlife. The insects cost Texas $47 million in crop losses and pest control last year.

And they're virtually omnivorous. As entomologist Edward Vargo put it, "anything that stands still for longer than 15 or 20 seconds is fire-ant food." In some ways these interlopers are almost as ambitious, greedy and dangerous as human beings.

The only long-term answer to controlling them lies in research. Even specialists know little about them. No one is sure where and how the males mate with queens. It is pointless to think about getting rid of them tomorrow or next week or next year. The answers, if any, are in the laboratory. Though it's unlikely that any magic bullet - a biogenetic death ray - will appear, that's where someone may find out why and how these creatures are so adaptable.

The most promising line of research involves sexual pheromones, chemical signals given off by queens. If pheromones can be developed that would disrupt communications among afire ants, they may literally drive the queens to distraction. Perhaps sex will succeed where poison has failed.

by CNB