86 
Psyche 
[June-September 
much better in the U. S. than in their native range, and even a minor 
reduction in fire ant populations might reduce it appreciably as a 
nuisance in some areas. 
Nature and Extent of Damage 
The kind and extent of the damage done by fire ants has been the 
subject of much dispute. Generally, control agencies, and especially 
the USDA-affiliated ones, have emphasized the deleterious effects 
produced by the 1 ant, while some zealous anti-insecticide writers have 
written it off as doing negligible harm. Both groups admit that the 
ant mounds do interfere with the harvesting of forage crops. Harvest- 
ing machinery is often damaged by striking the hard mounds, and 
field hands are stung by the ants — in some cases so badly that they 
refuse to work infested fields. Occasionally, land values have fallen 
somewhat in badly infested areas. The health threat must also be 
considered in cities and towns, where the ants may infest lawns and 
gardens and even sometimes enter houses. Small children and unusu- 
ally sensitive adults have occasionally suffered grave illness, or in two 
or three cases may even have died as a result of fire ant stings. Numer- 
ous stings result in a rash-like group of pustules that can be very an- 
noying for several days or more. Still, the fire ant as a health menace 
must be ranked far below ordinary bees and wasps, which are respon- 
sible for many times the deaths that fire ants cause during a given 
period of years, in the same states. It is difficult to see how the ant 
can be classed as a serious public health problem despite scare stories 
in the press, television and in a USDA-sponsored film. Professor F. S. 
Arant, head of the entomological contingent at Auburn University, 
current president of the Entomological Society of America, and a 
top authority on the fire ant, agreeing with Dr. J. L. George 10 and 
other state entomologists in the Southeast, calls the fire ant a “major 
nuisance,” but deprecates its role as a crop pest. Studies made at 
Auburn 14 and elewhere in the South generally have borne out this 
evaluation. It is interesting to note that the studies 6 ’ 27 that have 
found more or less serious damage done to crop plants were made 
before 1953. These studies were mainly concentrated in south-central 
Alabama, near the Mobile Bay center of fire ant spread, and were 
based on personal investigation as well as uninvestigated farmer 
reports. That some crop damage was done in this area in the late 
’forties and early ’fifties is incontestable, but even then, the damage 
does not seem to have been insupportable. That more recent studies 
have failed to find serious crop damage is probably to be laid to a 
gradual change in the habits of the ants or their population density, 
