Crawl Space: Invasive Ant Armies Clash on U.S. Soil

One of the most aggressive invasive ants in the world seems to have met its match in North Carolina--but if the arthropod challenger prevails, don?t expect it to play nice

By Marissa Fessenden

STUNG Asian needle ant attacking a termite Image: By Benoit Guenard

The Argentine ant has spread to every continent except Antarctica, overwhelming native ants with sheer numbers and fierce battle tactics. But they may have met their match in a recent arrival: the Asian needle ant. The cross-species face-off, a surprise to entomologists, could topple ecosystems where the battle lines are drawn.

Invading ants make up just a handful of the more than 12,4000 described ant species in the world, says Jes S?e Pedersen, an associate professor at the Center for Social Evolution at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Yet, their impact on ecosystems, human health and the economy far outstrips their Lilliputian size. Red fire ants can endanger the lives of those who unwittingly stumble on a nest. Some invasive species are agricultural pests or ?farm? voracious plant-eating aphids to milk them for their sugar-laden excrement.

Invasive ants often kill, eat or outcompete native ant species?the latter of which play key roles in the ecosystems where they make their homes. Many native ants are gardeners?they till the soil and plant seeds. Alien ants that come from a different environment do not pick up the jobs of those they push out.

The invaders can also create an ecosystem meltdown: Yellow crazy ants that invaded Christmas Island aggravated native birds so much that they have changed their eating habits and feast on the island?s famous red crabs. Food competition from the ants, combined with other invasive species such as feral cats and black rats, may have led to the extinction of the Christmas Island pipistrelle bat.

Figuring out an invading species?s impact on an ecosystem is tricky. Researchers rarely observe an invasion in progress. But this time may be different. The opening salvos between the newly recognized invasive Asian needle ant and the more notorious Argentine ant offer just that opportunity, Pedersen says.

Researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh unexpectedly stumbled on the unfolding ant war several years ago. Eleanor Spicer Rice, a graduate student studying entomology at the time, was tracking a network of Argentine ant nests in an office park in North Carolina and found a few nests of Asian needle ants. ?It is really weird that another ant could be nesting within the Argentine territory,? Spicer Rice says. Argentine ants do not tolerate competition. Typically, they are able to push other ants out of an area by attacking the rivals and dominating food sources. Originally from South America, they form massive interrelated networks of nests called super colonies.

The situation seemed unprecedented. The largest ant colony in the world is an Argentine ant super colony spanning more than 6,000 kilometers in the Mediterranean region. For some reason, across a few square miles of North Carolina the Argentine ants? world-conquering strategy was not working. The Asian needle ants were, in fact, gaining ground. In March 2009 Spicer Rice and her colleagues found Argentine ants at 90 trees, sharing nine of them with the Asian ants. By June 2011, the Argentine ants had been driven back to 67 trees, were neighbors with the interlopers in 15 and the Asian needle ants had taken over 17 of the sites.

To see if the Asian needle ants were driving the other species away, the researchers selectively poisoned the Asian needle ants in some areas. The Argentine intruders returned, indicating that predators, resource availability or other factors were not behind their initial retreat.

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