Liverpool
Pest Control
Argentine
Ants
Although it is rare for Harrier Pest Control to encounter this ant
today eradicating them does require specialist skills and the job
should not be tackled by an amateur for fear of spreading the
infestation.
The
Argentine ant
(
Linepithema
humile,
formerly
Iridomyrmex
humilis)
is a dark ant native to northern
Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil. It is an invasive
species that has been established in many mediterranean climate areas,
inadvertently introduced by humans to many places, including South
Africa, New Zealand, Japan, Easter Island, Australia, Hawaii, Europe,
and the United States.
They have been extraordinarily successful, in part, because different
nests of the introduced Argentine ants seldom attack or compete with
each other, unlike most other species of ant. In their introduced
range, their genetic
makeup is so uniform that individuals from one nest can mingle in a
neighboring nest without being attacked. Thus, in most of their
introduced range they form "supercolonies".
"Some ants have an extraordinary social organization, called
unicoloniality, whereby individuals mix freely among physically
separated nests. This type of social organization is not only a key
attribute responsible for the ecological domination of these ants, but
also an evolutionary paradox and a potential problem for kin selection
theory because relatedness between nest mates is effectively zero.
In contrast, native populations are more genetically diverse,
genetically differentiated (among colonies and across space), and form
colonies that are much smaller than the supercolonies that dominate the
introduced range. Argentine ants in their native South America
also co-exist with many other species of ants, and do not attain the
high population densities that characterize introduced populations.
[6]
0800
781 9329
01257
230637
Liverpool
Pest
Control / Wirral Pest Control
Please
note that in the
event of an abortive call out i.e customer not at home, pest
mis-identified by customer, bumblebees mistaken for wasps etc there
will be a £25.00 call out charge.
Customer MUST advise us over the phone if bats are known to be present
on the property.