Did you know that the fire ant is a native of South America and that it’s been reported it came to the United States by accident in the 1930s, probably in dirt used as ballast on a ship traveling from Argentina to Alabama?

Some reports estimate that there are more fire ant colonies in the U.S. than in their native South America. Currently they inhabit all or parts of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. They have been discovered in Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland.

The lack of a natural biological control agent is the most likely explanation for the increase in fire ant populations.

In March of this year, residents of Ortona in Glades County, specifically members of the River Oaks Subdivision, started noticing a decline in the fire ant population.

“I usually sprinkle Ortho on the mounds but I started noticing a decline in the fire ant mounds on my property when the stay at home order was issued at the first of March, and I hadn’t put out any killer for a month or so,” Dean Johnson, a property owner in River Oaks, said.

Inez Christiani noticed the decline in the area when she and her husband, Gerhard Heine, returned from spending the winter in the Bahamas on their boat. “I found it really strange, we don’t have any fire ants around our house (in the River Oaks Subdivision) but they are still on the property where we keep our boat in Turkey Creek,” Inez said.

According to Stewart Swanson, Multi-County Sugarcane Extension Agent III with the University of Florida IFAS, the reason for this decline could be the tiny phorid fly, which lays eggs inside the ant. The larvae travel to the head and eat away at the brain. The ant wanders aimlessly for about two weeks, exhibiting what could be called zombie-like behavior then, its head falls off.

In their native home of South America, phorid flies are natural enemies of fire ants, so researchers at the University of Florida considered them a good solution to fire ant control, first releasing them in 1998 in Gainesville, then releasing them into other parts of the state and into Georgia until 2008. Locally the fly was released in Goodno in 2008, which is less than 4 miles from the River Oaks Subdivision as the crow flies or, in this case, as the fly flies.

The success of the program was not measured in eradication — the flies do not completely eliminate the ants — but in control of the mounds, and that control seems to be happening in the Ortona area.