The Cellar Image of the Day

This page from a bug identification giude was linked to by Digg the other day. The photo was taken in Kissimmee, Florida.

Apparently this variety of ants do this to survive when their nest is flooded. As if a flood wasn't scary enough. But in case you're still underwhelmed, guess what happens to you if you encounter one of these things?

According to this document (bold emphasis mine):

Quote:

Colonies of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, can survive flood conditions by forming a raft of workers that floats on the water’s surface until the flood recedes or higher ground is found. Forced from the protection of their nests and left without retreat, rafting colonies are both exposed and cornered, and are thus more vulnerable to damage than they would be otherwise.

As a logical corollary, I tested the hypothesis that rafting colonies would compensate for their elevated vulnerability through an increase in worker defensiveness. I measured defensiveness using the amount of venom workers deliver per sting, since the pain and tissue damage caused by fire ant venom (i.e. its repellency) is dose-dependent. In the lab, I assayed the venom doses delivered by S. invicta workers before and after flooding them from their nests with water. Workers delivered significantly higher venom doses while rafting than they did defending their nests pre-flood. Mechanistically, the unusual concentration of workers during rafting may result in a concomitantly unusual concentration of alarm pheromones, and thus the increase in defensiveness. Functionally, the increase in venom dose during rafting should serve to better protect the exposed colony from molestation. From a practical standpoint, human encounters with fire ants during flood conditions have the potential to be unusually dangerous; not only are large concentrations of workers exposed and available for defense, but they deliver significantly larger venom doses when they sting.

'dizzying intellectual' ?

Fire ants are da debil. You haven't felt pain until you've suffered a few stings from those critters. And they swell. And they itch ferociously. I would not get near one of those rafts for a million dollars.

When I was a teenager I sat down on a nest of fire ants or someother red, stinging ant, as I was watching the sunrise coming down off an all night mushroom trip.

kind of a buzz kill

FIRE ANTS! FIRE ANTS!

Oh. Sorry. Habit.
Those things ARE the debil. They leave scars, dagnabbit.

Someone I know lost a few newborn puppies to these bastards. I wish I had every one in the world in a quart jar. That way I'd know they were dead. Some say everything in nature serves a purpose. Somebody please tell me what the hell good these animals are.

I'll tell you one thing, they've mostly driven the black ants off of my family's land, and therefore the Horny Toads that ate the black ants. Which sucks.

I'm with Stonan .. I'd love to squirt a litre of gasoline on that raft and light it up ..

There is NO reason whatsoever for these things to exist .. along with mosquitoes and every other annoying useless insect ever known to annoy and injure mankind ..

Thanks to some pretty lax quarantine, these **#*%$#** things escaped into the Australian countryside, around Brisbane in Queensland .. and started breeding like wildfire ..

Fortunately some prompt action by individuals and a concerted Govt campaign, have seen them controlled, and virtually eliminated.

Meantimes .. the exercise to contain and eliminate the fire ant, has burnt up AU$173 MILLION of our hard-earned $$ .. to get rid of a pest we didn't have, and didn't need ..

http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/fireants/

Mosquitoes, unfortunately, are food for a lot of awesome indigenous animals... but fire-ants are invaders and I would wipe them all out today if I could.

Damn. I do that too. But I'm an uncle.

Welcome to the Cellar, Sarasvati48. That's hard to type.