10-24-2012, 12:26 PM
"Save your money and accept defeat!"
Wise words. I have no lofty goals of eradication- just a LFA free zone around the food garden and the pets/livestock (and of course, the house). We pick fruit from trees with LFA and generally suffer just a few bites per week (no more than mosquitoes). While I was doing some reading/research on them one interesting reference I found was that they were deliberately distributed in South America to out-compete certain crop pests. Another interesting thing I found about them on wikipedia:
"... queens produce more queens through ameiotic parthenogenesis. Sterile workers usually are produced from eggs fertilized by males. In some of the eggs fertilized by males, however, the fertilization can cause the female genetic material to be ablated from the zygote. In this way, males pass on only their genes to become fertile male offspring. This is the first recognized example of an animal species where both females and males can reproduce clonally resulting in a complete separation of male and female gene pools.[8]
These ants get both the benefits of both asexual and sexual reproduction[9][8] - the daughters who can reproduce (the queens) have all of the mother's genes, while the sterile workers whose physical strength and disease resistance are important are produced sexually."
I think this pretty much guarantees their survival under almost any circumstance, as the colony has the benefits of both sexual reproduction and cloning at the same time.
Wise words. I have no lofty goals of eradication- just a LFA free zone around the food garden and the pets/livestock (and of course, the house). We pick fruit from trees with LFA and generally suffer just a few bites per week (no more than mosquitoes). While I was doing some reading/research on them one interesting reference I found was that they were deliberately distributed in South America to out-compete certain crop pests. Another interesting thing I found about them on wikipedia:
"... queens produce more queens through ameiotic parthenogenesis. Sterile workers usually are produced from eggs fertilized by males. In some of the eggs fertilized by males, however, the fertilization can cause the female genetic material to be ablated from the zygote. In this way, males pass on only their genes to become fertile male offspring. This is the first recognized example of an animal species where both females and males can reproduce clonally resulting in a complete separation of male and female gene pools.[8]
These ants get both the benefits of both asexual and sexual reproduction[9][8] - the daughters who can reproduce (the queens) have all of the mother's genes, while the sterile workers whose physical strength and disease resistance are important are produced sexually."
I think this pretty much guarantees their survival under almost any circumstance, as the colony has the benefits of both sexual reproduction and cloning at the same time.