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> There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. “But i
by rwallace 9y ago
> There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. “But it’ll have absolutely no ticks. So it’ll be lovely from that perspective,” says Wild.
Sounds like on balance they might do more good than harm, then? Fire ant stings are painful, but they're nothing compared to Lyme disease.
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- abakker 9y agocan we import them to CT?
- 24gttghh 9y agoMA to ME already have a different species of Fire ants[0]; from Europe though, not S. America. Please do not purposely import these foreign species. [0]https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2550e/ https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2550e/
- abakker 9y agoshould clarify that I am not serious. I've just had Lyme disease enough times to want to kill ticks. Better solution, AFAICT, is aggressive reduction in deer populations. Hunting and predator reintroduction to bring deer population down into historical norms would seemingly reduce a major host/transport mechanism, and would have secondary benefits for the hardwood forest ecosystem.
- eric_h 9y agoYes - bring back the wolves!
- 24gttghh 9y agoSmall rodents/birds are also one of the primary food supplies for larval ticks, so reducing these populations should help to disrupt their life-cycle[0]. The smaller ticks are the ones more likely to infect you as well, since they are harder to spot. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/images/lifecycle.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/images/lifecycle.jpg
- abakker 9y agoWhile this is true, the average mouse never goes more that 300 feet from their dwelling. While mice can infect deer ticks with lyme disease, it is deer that are primarily responsible for spreading the disease to new populations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3072871/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3072871/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140701111549.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140701111549.h...
- 24gttghh 9y agoAh, I'm not saying it is mice that are the vectors, but that mice are a food that keep Deer Ticks alive in the summer months. Also, from the conclusion of your NIH article: >Despite a decrease in EM rash incidence, however, we did not find a statistically significant effect of the deer hunt on EM rash incidence, probably due to LD reporting issues, study design limitations, and the small population size.
- thomnottom 9y agoFrom what I have read (I do not have the references handy), while they are called deer ticks the primary hosts/transport are mice.
- mrfusion 9y agoI was wondering if we could give deer the equivalent of tick/flea collars? Or maybe put out salt licks where they have to enter through some kind of machine that sprays them with some kind of insecticide.
- mcguire 9y agoNot as crazy an idea as you might think: http://epi.publichealth.nc.gov/cd/rabies/orv.html http://epi.publichealth.nc.gov/cd/rabies/orv.html http://www.raboral.com/about-rabies/raboral-v-rg http://www.raboral.com/about-rabies/raboral-v-rg
- abakker 9y agoMy other ulterior motive in reducing their population is the forest ecosystem, though. http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v2/issues/figure_sets/deer/overview.html http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v2/issues/figure_sets/deer/overview.... https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/08/22/too-many-deer/ https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/08/22/too-many-deer/ http://strawberryhill.org/hunting-a-reverence-for-preserving/ http://strawberryhill.org/hunting-a-reverence-for-preserving... the last link has some especially troubling photographs of what I'm talking about; growing up I saw those exclosures all around with much the same effect every time. Possibly a salt lick that just sterilizes the deer?
- R_haterade 9y ago>Possibly a salt lick that just sterilizes the deer? Only after we finish putting chemicals in the water to turn the freaking frogs gay.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoEasier to just shoot them. The only vehicle out of the 5 we own that has never had a "deer incident" is the newest one. I also have neighbors who almost died when they hit a deer during a motorcyle ride.
- freehunter 9y ago
- usefulcat 9y agoThey've definitely been in TX for at least 40 years, so if they could survive in CT I'm pretty sure they'd already be there by now. Probably too cold.
- tsomctl 9y agoExcept that fire ant stings are guaranteed to be painful. Not all tick bites are guaranteed to give you Lyme's disease.
- Icedcool 9y agoI'll take the risk. Lyme's disease is a life long issue. Fire ant stings last about a week at the most.
- dfc 9y agoI thought it was "Lyme disease can be a life long issue"?
- pwg 9y agoIt is. If diagnosed early (i.e., during the "bulls eye" stage) about a 2-3 week course of antibiotics will take care of it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Treatment
- msisk6 9y agoI can vouch for this. About 15 years back I was living in a rural area of New Hampshire and got the "bulls eye" mark on my leg. Never saw the tick in this case but ticks and bites were common around there. I promptly went to the doctor to get a course of antibiotics and never had further health issues. Now I'm in rural Texas and surrounded by fire ants. I need to rethink my life choices.
- ahelwer 9y ago"Chronic Lyme Disease" is pseudoscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease
- cat199 9y agoNot sure if this shows 'pseudoscience' or that there is a reported set of symptoms which science hasn't proven or disproven.. Just because there is not scientific evidence doesn't mean something doesn't exist.
- hellogoodbyeeee 9y agoI'm pretty scared of the Lone Star Tick bite causing me to become allergic to beef. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy
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- CWuestefeld 9y agoThe fire ants damage many more species than ticks. They've all but destroyed the Texas horned lizard, for example.
- munificent 9y agoTexas has very few cases of Lyme disease. It's mostly a concern in the northeastern states.
- cat199 9y agoMaaaybe because there's lots of fire ants?