Ants - Not a Gardener`s Friend!
Ants can actually KILL, as this news story showed:-
Beware of the Bugs: Fire Ants Can Kill Americans
A South Carolina Woman Died After Being Stung by Fire Ants
In about five percent of cases, fire ants can actually cause death.
July 2, 2006 — Last week, Janet Wallace Roedl Shiansky, a 68-year-old South Carolina woman, went into anaphylactic shock and died after being attacked by ants while she was gardening. The ants that attacked her are called fire ants and are the most aggressive ants in the world — and they are spreading to other parts of the country.
Entomologist Mike Raupp said that when fire ants attack they usually cause minor red welts and a pustule that will fade in a couple days. In about five percent of cases, fire ants can actually cause death.
"In those cases, where people have a volatile reaction, some of them actually do die," said Raupp. "It's a severe allergic reaction — throats swell up and people literally suffocate. But that is very rare. Most people won't react that way."
Shiansky died after several ants ran up her sneaker last weekend and stung her foot. Her husband brushed them off and treated the stings with ammonia, according to the Associated Press. A few minutes later, he went inside to check on her and found her lying on a bed unresponsive with her sunglasses still on. At the hospital, doctors found that her brain had begun to swell. She died the next day from what doctors said was an allergic reaction that caused her airways to close.
Dangerous Ants
Fire ants, which often attack and kill small animals like kittens, are primarily found in the Southeast, Raupp said. Their range extends from North Carolina across Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas — and there is also a colony in California.
"You might find some in other parts of the country — but there aren't large concentrations in the North," Raupp said. "If you see them in the northern states it's largely due to landscaping transplants. The fire ants are transported on plants that are taken from the South and planted in the North. … But most fire ant stings happen to people in the southern states."
Fire ants have become such a problem in the Southeast that phorid flies have been imported to combat them. The flies lay larvae on the ants. When the larvae hatch they eat the fire ants' heads.
abc news
Beware of the Bugs: Fire Ants Can Kill Americans
A South Carolina Woman Died After Being Stung by Fire Ants
In about five percent of cases, fire ants can actually cause death.
July 2, 2006 — Last week, Janet Wallace Roedl Shiansky, a 68-year-old South Carolina woman, went into anaphylactic shock and died after being attacked by ants while she was gardening. The ants that attacked her are called fire ants and are the most aggressive ants in the world — and they are spreading to other parts of the country.
Entomologist Mike Raupp said that when fire ants attack they usually cause minor red welts and a pustule that will fade in a couple days. In about five percent of cases, fire ants can actually cause death.
"In those cases, where people have a volatile reaction, some of them actually do die," said Raupp. "It's a severe allergic reaction — throats swell up and people literally suffocate. But that is very rare. Most people won't react that way."
Shiansky died after several ants ran up her sneaker last weekend and stung her foot. Her husband brushed them off and treated the stings with ammonia, according to the Associated Press. A few minutes later, he went inside to check on her and found her lying on a bed unresponsive with her sunglasses still on. At the hospital, doctors found that her brain had begun to swell. She died the next day from what doctors said was an allergic reaction that caused her airways to close.
Dangerous Ants
Fire ants, which often attack and kill small animals like kittens, are primarily found in the Southeast, Raupp said. Their range extends from North Carolina across Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas — and there is also a colony in California.
"You might find some in other parts of the country — but there aren't large concentrations in the North," Raupp said. "If you see them in the northern states it's largely due to landscaping transplants. The fire ants are transported on plants that are taken from the South and planted in the North. … But most fire ant stings happen to people in the southern states."
Fire ants have become such a problem in the Southeast that phorid flies have been imported to combat them. The flies lay larvae on the ants. When the larvae hatch they eat the fire ants' heads.
abc news
posted by dex at
4:12 pm
2 Comments:
Without ants ALL our ecosystems will collapse - artificial, managed or "wild" alike.
What we need gardeners to be aware of is the importance of controlling the spread of invasive or tramp ant species to areas where their natural predators won't spread.
That's part of the reason fire ants are so successful in the USA.
Another is the long-term cavalier attitude of developers, importers, shippers, nursery owners and gardeners to how they source, keep and transplant garden and commercial plants.
I think there is a lot of better advice you could give your readers than the news that anaphylactic shock can kill . . .
By
ian, at 12:07 am
The absence of your own comment or balancing text means that repeating the content is the same as endorsing it, and rather un-green. Selectively adding more from the ultra-reliable (and inherently populist) Wikipedia reinforcing this view of ants as pests performs the same dis-service doesn't it?
See http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/index.html please . . .
all the best
By
ian, at 1:01 am
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