Insects are amazing, but sometimes they’re annoying (and even dangerous): First it was bedbugs, now it’s fire ants.
Ants can be formidable. Fire ants (they got the name “fire” because they sting) used to be found outdoors in warm climates, but now they’ve moved to the city. Once they’re in the city, they form massive supercolonies with thousands of queens and millions of workers. One researcher found a supercolony as long as a city block. City ants are also more aggressive and more likely to swarm.
National Public Radio quotes researcher Sean Menke as saying, “Urban populations are thousands–possibly tens of thousands–times larger than anything I’ve ever seen in nature. It is on a completely different scale. It’s expressing something very different from anything anybody’s ever found in a more natural habitat.”
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