{"id":355611,"date":"2026-06-30T11:29:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/355611\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T11:29:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:29:16","slug":"how-fire-ants-got-to-texas-and-how-to-get-rid-of-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/355611\/","title":{"rendered":"How fire ants got to Texas and how to get rid of them"},"content":{"rendered":"

On her last day of sleep-away camp in 2024, 8-year-old Lucy crept barefoot in a field of tall grass, plotting her next move in a game of capture the counselor, when she felt a stinging sensation on both of her feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to keep calm,\u201d Lucy, now 10, said. \u201cBut I think I started crying. I told one of the counselors and they started a group of people who needed to go to the nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucy\u2019s feet were swarming with fire ants after she stepped in two massive mounds. By the time she rinsed her feet off with a sprinkler, it was too late. She counted more than 60 stings on each foot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recovery was long and torturous,\u201d her mom, Meghan Goddin, said. \u201cIt was several weeks before the itching subsided and many months for the physical scars to disappear. We are still waiting for the psychological scars to fade \u2014 she refuses to go back to sleep away camp even two years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve lived in Austin long enough \u2014 or at least walked around barefoot a couple of times \u2014 you\u2019ve likely felt the wrath of a fire ant, too.<\/p>\n

Fire ants might seem as Texan as two-step, but they are actually invasive, having arrived on a ship from South America to Mobile, Ala. in the 1930s. Today they are mostly considered a nuisance \u2014 save for some Austinities like Lucy who said fire ants are now her \u201cworst enemy.\u201d But for a period of Texas history, the red imported fire ant was among the biggest threats to the state\u2019s ecosystem, agriculture industry and public health.<\/p>\n

Spreading like ‘syrup on a plate’ <\/p>\n

Larry Gilbert, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, has been researching the red imported fire ant at UT\u2019s Brackenridge Field Laboratory since 1981. Back then, he said fire ant mounds were spreading across the state like \u201csyrup on a plate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

KUT News<\/p>\n

Larry Gilbert has led UT’s Brackenridge Field Laboratory since 1981. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou could just walk across Texas on fire ants,\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cYou could say waltz across Texas. You definitely need to be hopping and skipping. You wouldn’t want to stand there.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen suddenly. State and local leaders caught wind the fire ants were migrating west from Mobile as early as the 1950s. An Austin American-Statesman article from 1958 with the headline \u201cFire Ant Outbreak\u201d rang the alarm bells: \u201cThese ants migrate,\u201d it read. \u201cAnd the infestation is spreading in this direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/p>\n

Austin American-Statesman\u00a0via ProQuest<\/p>\n

A screenshot of an Austin American-Statesman news story from 1958, which announced fire ants were migrating to the Austin area. <\/p>\n

Farmers reported fire ants were killing baby cattle, spoiling crops and shorting out electrical equipment. Biologists warned they could harm birds, toads and other insects. Newspapers reminded the public that in rare cases, a fire ant sting is lethal to humans<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In 1998, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service estimated fire ants were costing Texans $1.2 billion annually<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were running for Texas [agricultural] commissioner on a platform of, ‘Let’s eradicate fire ants,\u2019\u201d Gilbert said.<\/p>\n

Local officials encouraged residents to douse fire ant mounds with insecticides and report sightings to the county health department. But Gilbert said chemicals weren\u2019t working, and even if they had, it wouldn\u2019t have been a long-term solution: new studies were coming out that the pesticides being used \u2014 chlordane, heptachlor and mirex \u2014 were carcinogenic. All were phased out by the late \u201870s and later banned by the Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

It seemed like Texans were giving up on the possibility of fire ants being wiped from the state. In 1976, The Austin American-Statesman ran a story with the headline: \u201cFire Ants: They\u2019re here, and there\u2019s not much we can do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Catching a predator<\/p>\n

The red imported fire ant couldn\u2019t be eradicated, but Gilbert believes his team\u2019s research at least helped control the population in Austin.<\/p>\n

On a trip to the countryside of Brazil in the mid-80s, Gilbert saw something peculiar. Red imported fire ants were still a dominant ant in the country\u2019s ecosystem, but their mounds didn\u2019t carpet the land like they did in Texas. Keeping the mounds at bay was something that didn\u2019t exist yet in the U.S.: a natural predator.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a field the size of a football field, you might have five or six species of these little [phorid] flies that attack the fire ants and inject eggs into them and cause great chaos,\u201d Gilbert said. <\/p>\n

The flies not only killed some ants, but they also made it harder for them to forage for food.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

KUT News<\/p>\n

Larry Gilbert said if you agitate a fire ant mound, there is a good chance two species of phorid flies will arrive at the scene to attack the fire ants. <\/p>\n

A video of the process now plays on a loop on a flat-screen TV mounted in the hallway of the Brackenridge Field Laboratory. A tiny phorid fly, no bigger than the size of Lincoln\u2019s nose on a penny, taunts a small colony of fire ants. The fly darts into an ant\u2019s body, lays an egg, leaving the ant slightly paralyzed, and darts off. The larva eventually moves to the ant\u2019s head, which causes the head to fall off and the ant to die.<\/p>\n

The discovery set Gilbert\u2019s team on a decades-long mission to naturalize four species of phorid flies in Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get congratulations from ranchers saying, \u2018Since the flies got here, I’m seeing more quail, I’m starting to see lizards,\u201d he said. \u201cI always say, well, I can’t claim that we did it, because maybe it was the drought, maybe it was this, maybe it was that \u2026 but we’re pretty convinced that it has had a damping effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

An ‘invincible’ pest<\/p>\n

The phorid fly may have contributed to a slow, widespread decline in red imported fire ant populations in Texas, but mounds are still ubiquitous in Austin backyards, parks and summer camps.<\/p>\n

Local colonies can be hard to get rid of. Fire ants can survive a variety of climates and even form rafts out of their own bodies during floods<\/a>. It’s no wonder that the the Latin genus for the red imported fire ant is Solenopsis invicta, meaning “invincible.”<\/p>\n

Wizzie Brown, an entomologist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, said a genetic mutation that may have occurred when the red imported fire ant arrived in the U.S. may have made them especially hard to kill.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

KUT News<\/p>\n

A map of fire ant mounds found near the Brackenridge Field Lab from the 1980s still hangs in the hallway of the lab. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people like to think they can manage fire ants by digging up one fire ant mound and dumping it on another one, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh they\u2019re going to fight to the death and it\u2019s going to be awesome,\u2019 which it totally would be awesome,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIf you have single queen colonies, that would work, but unfortunately here in Texas, we have multiple queen colonies \u2026 and they are all pumping out hundreds, if not a thousand eggs a day. \u2026 So if a queen dies, there\u2019s backups.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are effective ways to manage fire ants. <\/p>\n

Brown said fire ants will \u201cessentially kill themselves off for you\u201d if you use a bait product, such as corn grits covered in soybean oil and a slow-acting insecticide. Gilbert said he\u2019s gotten rid of individual colonies by waiting until the brood surfaces after a rainstorm and pouring boiling water over the mound.<\/p>\n

Don’t scratch that itch<\/p>\n

If you do accidentally step in a fire ant mound: be warned. <\/p>\n

Brown said fire ants both sting and bite, and they come out in droves. When a mound is agitated, ants release alarm pheromones, signaling to hundreds of female workers it’s time to attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing they do is they bite you, and they really, really hold on with their mandibles,\u201d Brown said. \u201cYou can’t just shake them off your hand like you would some other ant. \u2026 They will continue to sting you until you brush them off of your body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stings results in itchy, sometimes painful pustules. But don’t scratch or pop them \u2014 breaking them open can cause infection. Instead, treat them with a cold compress or anti-itch ointment. Bites should subside in 7 to 10 days. <\/p>\n

If you have fire ants in your backyard and are struggling to get rid of them, Brown said you can rest easy knowing they at least help aerate soil and contribute to the food chain. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a fabulous benefit \u2026 but when people ask me \u2018do they do anything good?\u2019 Those are the only two things I got,” she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you\u2019re new to Texas, watch where you step.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On her last day of sleep-away camp in 2024, 8-year-old Lucy crept barefoot in a field of tall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[126507,132,134,133,126508,126509,126506,126510,126511,38121,5877,126512,126513],"class_list":["post-355611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-ant-bites","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-fire-ant-bites","tag-fire-ant-exterminator-austin","tag-fire-ants","tag-how-to-get-rid-of-fire-ants","tag-imported-red-fire-ants","tag-invasive-species","tag-new-world-screwworm","tag-pest-control-austin","tag-red-imported-fire-ants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}