Fire Ants
Species
Fire Ant Facts
- Location: Statewide in Florida and across the South from Texas to Virginia, plus parts of California and New Mexico.
- Color: Reddish brown to dark red, with a coppery head and a darker abdomen.
- Size: Workers range from about 1/16 to 1/4 inch, in mixed sizes within one colony.
How to Identify Fire Ants
Red imported fire ant workers carry a stinger at the tip of the abdomen. Once a colony grows large, it raises winged males and females. On warm days, often after rain, these winged ants pour out of the mound together and mate in the air. Mated queens drop to the ground, break off their wings and try to start new colonies. The males die soon after mating.
Fire Ant Behavior
Fire ants favor open, sunny ground. Lawns, pastures, roadsides and ball fields suit them far better than shaded woods. Around homes they often build in the loose soil of landscape beds, along driveways and sidewalks, and against the foundation. A mound is a dome of worked soil with no opening on top, and an older one can measure more than a foot across and stand several inches to a foot tall. After heavy rain, mounds often pop up quickly in new spots.
The mound works like a thermostat. Workers move the brood up toward the sun-warmed surface on cool mornings and down into deeper tunnels when the soil gets hot or cold, which is why foraging slows in the hottest part of a summer afternoon. Some colonies have one queen, while others have many and spread by budding off new mounds close by, which explains why one mound often turns into several. A mature colony can hold hundreds of thousands of workers. Disturb a mound and they boil out fast, climbing onto whatever touched it and stinging again and again.
Fire Ants Photos
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