A New Weapon Against Fire Ants: Crack a Key Gene and Turn the Workers on Their Queen?
A New Weapon Against Fire Ants: Crack a Key Gene and Turn the Workers on Their Queen?
You have to admire these researchers. Perhaps one of the world’s hardest problems really will be cracked by scientists in Taiwan! I do believe there is still a long road ahead, though. The fascinating and mysterious thing about living things is that what we assume and what actually happens are sometimes very far apart, or a difference in conditions can lead to a completely different outcome.
Beyond truly identifying the key factor that fire ant workers use to recognize their queen, the next challenge is turning that finding into a bait that can be mass-produced below a certain cost. Then there is the further problem of making the bait specific to the invasive red imported fire ant (so it is not taken by other species and causes knock-on effects), on top of the biggest hurdles for any bait: palatability and shelf life.
Maybe it is just my impression, but both in Taiwan and abroad, more and more researchers and articles seem to be focusing on ants. That means more researchers are paying attention to ants (even if much of it is still about control), which we are delighted to see. We also hope to have the chance to use our experience to help more researchers go deeper.
