Fire Ants Are Beneficial To The Environment
Fire Ants Are Beneficial To The Environment
It may be hard to believe that such pain-inducing insects, like fire ants, are beneficial to the environment. However, the pain associated with certain insect bites has nothing to do with the advantages that certain biting insects bring to certain ecosystems. You may hate fire ants as a result of personal experience, but, the environment, on the other hand, benefits from these hated insects. Fire ants help maintain the health of the landscape, but they also can be pests themselves. Despite the fact that fire ants can be pests, these ants are spoken of positively on the webpage titled Beneficial’s in the Garden & Landscape.
First of all, fire ants are not native to North America, similar to many North American insect pests. Fire ants actually originated in South America. Secondly, fire ants are not picky eaters, as ticks, termites, cockroaches, chinch bugs, scorpions, fleas and most happily, mosquitoes are all devoured by fire ants. Fire ants also consume mosquito eggs in addition to their larvae.
Fire ants also prevent profit-loss in the agricultural sector of the economy. For example, stinkbugs in soybean crops are kept in check by fire ants. Fireants also either kill or prevent boll weevils from consuming cotton crops. Fire ants also promote the growth of soybeans, cotton, and sugarcane. These crops are better off being infested with fire ants because fire ants aerate crop soil. Without fire ants, and the aeration of crop soil, plants would not receive the amount of nutrients and water that crop plants need in order to grow in a healthy manner.
In addition to killing a multitude of insect pests, some of which were not mentioned in this article, fire ants specifically aerate soil by digging underground tunnels and ant holes. Soon fire ants depart their underground homes, leaving the crop-soil thoroughly aerated. Unfortunately, large fire ant dirt mounds can damage farming equipment. Maybe they are upset for not being paid for their agricultural services.
Have you ever been attacked by fire ants? Did they cause you pain? What did the pain feel like?