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Texas Makes Zombie Fire Ants
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."
I for one welcome our new Zombie Fire Ant overlords.
You call this a zombie apocalypse? This ain't nothing compared to the zombie attack of 57.
My first thought was "Why does Texas need a zombie to terminate the employment of ants, and how did they get a job in the first place?"
Then I realized, this is Texas, afterall.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
This is what those environmentalists should be doing. Using nature against nature in ways that can help man.
---Hank Hill of Arlen, TX
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
More
Zombies are never the answer. Oh wait. Zombie ant overlords? That's totally different.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Way to fuck over the native ants, Texas. Not to mention any other unpredictable side-effects, which, when talking about introduced species, are /ALWAYS BAD/.
Too true.
Exhibit A: American colonials
Yep, you may have heard of the cane toads we have here in Australia. They were introduced to kill off cane beetles - well, there's been more than a few side effects of that particular decision.
Of course, you've just introduced a bug that drills itself into animals' brains and eats them, without killing the animal itself till some time later. How could that possibly go wrong?
"These are very slow acting," Plowes said. "It's more like a cumulative impact measured across a time frame of years. It's not an immediate silver bullet impact."
Well of course there's no silver bullet impact for zombie fire ants, but if we need to get rid of some werewolf fire ants, the silver bullets might do the trick!
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:
I for one don't welcome your tired unfunny cliche use.
When are the Russians going to get around to linking all these zombies into a botnet? Or would that be a bugnet?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
What do you do when a foreign species has been introduced to your land from another continent?
They aren't native and unfortunately in Texas there aren't any natural predators to the fire ant (such as the ant eater).
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Last time I checked, insects weren't plants.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
An example of an invasive species is the alligator weed. [...] The alligator weed flea beetle and two other biological controls were released in Florida. Because of their success, Florida banned the use of herbicides to control alligator weed three years after the controls were introduced.
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.
If only Slashdot provided some way to get more details, so you could read more about the plan instead of just assuming they did no kind of study and are totally winging it with no thought or planning whatsoever.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
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".
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Porky Pig tried this once in an old Bug Bunny cartoon.
He had a mouse problem, so he bought a cat.
When Porky Pig went to bed, the cat invited all of his friends over and they got wasted played the piano loudly and sang drinking songs. One of the cats had a lampshade on his head and everything.
When Porky Pig got fed up with this, he bought a dog. How he found a place in the 50's or 60's that sold dogs in the middle of the night is anyone's guess. He let the dog loose in the house and waited.
The cats got the dog drunk and he was singing with them in about 30 seconds.
So obviously these flies are eventually going to get drunk and sing, which is pretty cool, making this plan sweet.
After a few horrendous early bad attempts (Cane Toads for example) Australia's CSIRO (the government's research arm) has gotten very very good 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, the introducing of African dung beetles to curb an explosion in flies due to agriculture, and the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus 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 (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)
Yeah. Some of them are called Bob.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
When I got to New Mexico, I couldn't even look at huevos rancheros. Within a year, they had become a breakfast favorite.
The phorids will have whole generations to refine their taste.
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
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.
Can I get something like this for my ex-wife?
Apparently the ants are actively attracted to electrical equipment, people seem to think that they sense the magnetic fields(which is pretty cool; but not unheard of, there are a bunch of animals that are known to do so).
:(
Unfortunately, I learned this fascinating fact after my visit to Texas. I was particularly saddened to discover that my girlfriend had been previously aware of it; but had decided to head off my enthusiasm for dubiously sensible electricity experiments by not telling me at the time.
I'm not sure, there might be unforeseen consequences if such a mechanism were provided...
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.
Just like our current human overlords, then.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
In Australia we have recently had the fire ant invade our island nation with some very nasty environmental results. After years of study the CSIRO have discovered an inherent weakness with the fire ants colonies. The queen is the only ant able to breed in a colony so if you disable her the colony dies. So what we do here in the land of the sun and over sized rabbits called kangaroos is put the fire ant the queen on the pill, so far it has worked very well but like everything needs to be managed.
More info can be found here
It's not always bad. Cactoblastis caterpillar larvae introduction was pretty effective against prickly pear.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Listen Jimmy, if a zombie fire ant ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! Zombie fire ants crawl in through your ear and feed on your brains while you're asleep, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL THEM ZOMBIES?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, are there any native predators for these flies then? Or will it merely set off another even more vicious plague, one which attacks the native species instead of its intended target like most of these ill conceived schemes. If introducing one foreign pest is bad, introducing an entire food chain seems far worse to me.
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.
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 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.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
That works only if fire ants don't evolve to have multiple queens in one colony, like the fire ants here in Texas did. To add insult to injury, the worker fire ants will not feed all the queens the same foods, making it difficult to kill all the queens in a colony through poisoning.
Actually, I'm very tempted to apply:
1. Occam's Razor. If someone consistently acts stupid, talks stupid, etc, there are two possible explanations:
A: He's stupid.
B: He's a really really smart guy and a great actor, and pretends so well to be stupid that nobody can tell the difference.
I think you'll agree that the first is the simpler explanation.
2. The Peter Principle: everyone keeps getting promoted until they become incompetent for the job they just got promoted to. (E.g., because it needs different skills than the previous one.)
Politicians are actually one of the original examples in Peter's book. To get elected you need charisma, basically. But after you get elected, you need stuff like management skills, you need to know economics, etc. None of those played any role in convincing the people to elect you. So it's quite easy to end up with a bunch of elected politicians who genuinely don't have any more skills than talking convincingly out the arse and looking good in front of a camera. The skills they'd actually need to do a good job in the office, they simply don't have.
Worse yet, we elect those who can _lie_ convincingly or at least conveniently not mention half the truth. My standard example is the Phillips curve: all else being equal (and invariably out of your control), inflation and unemployment depend on each other. You push one down, the other goes up. Now think of all the politicians whose claim to deserving the office is, basically, "OMG, under the current government there is inflation! We'll reduce that!" or conversely for unemployment. But they never mention that their plan involves the other going _up_. If they told you that, that would be political suicide. So their getting elected depends on claiming to get one up, while strongly implying and getting you to assume (though not actually saying so) that the other will obviously stay put.
Or occasionally one promises to solve both. 'Cause, I suppose, if you're going to lie anyway, might as well go all the way.
Then we wonder how come they lie after they got elected, instead of actually doing what they promised. Duh. Because we tested their ability to lie, not the ability to do what they promised. We just promoted someone to a position for which they're unqualified and incompetent.
3. As a bonus: Hanlon's Razor. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I don't doubt that some of the above mentioned don't outright lie, but genuinely Peter's Principle applies. They don't understand economics well enough to know that they're promising an impossibility.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hence, sometimes people distinguish between animals and fish
Animals and fish? I don't think I've ever heard that split before. People often say things like "well at least we're not animals," or "humans can contemplate their existence, unlike animals," however I feel like that just stems from not having a precise term defining the set of all animals, minus humans.
Of course, even if we did have such a term, would it include homo sapiens sapiens and neanderthals? At what point would we be considered separate from the rest of the animal kingdom?
Getting back to the animals, we have several terms that can mean different things. For example a vegetarian might say "I don't eat meat," but in common parlance of lots of cookbooks (especially cookbooks over a decade or two old) you have meat, poultry, fish, game, and pork.
So-called pescetarians might eat plants + seafood, or just plants + fish. Wikipedia indicates that the word is a portmanteau of the Italian word pesce ("fish") + vegetarian; if a person eats things beyond just fish (e.g. crustaceans), should we use a different word?
"Omnivore" isn't much better, as I certainly don't eat everything. I can't even eat tomato plants and rhubarb leaves -- things that look remotely edible. But people generally understand each other, even if our words aren't as precisely specified as much people would like.
coding is life
Exhibit B: Crown of Thorns Starfish
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.
***Way to fuck over the native ants, Texas. Not to mention any other unpredictable side-effects, which, when talking about introduced species, are /ALWAYS BAD/.***
A bit too absolute perhaps. Phorid flies are picky eaters. Part of the problem is that phorids that attack the native fire ants -- which are not considered to be much of a problem (in the US) -- don't find the non-native fire ants -- which are a problem here -- appealing. The proposal it to release phorids that are the natural enemies of the non-native fire ants and do not attack the indigenous species.
I suspect that if you had ever encountered Solenopsis wagneri, your opinions on the introductions of natural controls might be a bit less rigid.
see http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~gilbert/research/fireants/faqans.html#which
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
When they mentioned bringing the natural predator from another continent, I imagined this.
Now, that would be a cool animal to set loose in Texas!
Hi, I'm a zombifying parasite. You may remember me from such insects as cockroaches and grasshoppers.
Yes, but the probability of her having a real vagina is 99,99%.
Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
Screw taxonomy. If it moves, it's an animal, eat it. If it don't move, it might be vegetable, eat it. If it wasn't a vegetable, you needed your minerals anyway.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br