Rasberry crazy ant adds a new home

According to today's news release from AgNMore, the Rasberry ant, Nylanderia sp. near pubens, has now been found near Weslaco, TX in the lower Rio Grande valley.  This marks another geographical jump probably aided by humans.  The first area of infestation just south of Houston, has spread to approximately 12 adjacent counties.  Last summer the ants were reported from San Antonio area, as well as Jim Hogg county.  The Weslaco sighting, in south Hidalgo county, confirms that the ants have made it successfully to far south Texas. 

For more information about the Rasberry crazy ant, see the page at the Center for Urban and Structural Entomology's website.

The great beetle invasion

It's fall, and for most Texans this means principally and foremost, the beginning of football season.  But while high school males are rejoicing at the end of two-a-days and the beginning of cheerleaders, another species is rejoicing in the change of weather.

The sugarcane beetle, Euetheola humilis, is found throughout the South.  First reported as a pest of sugarcane in Louisiana in 1880, it is considered an occasional pest of field corn, rice and sweet potato. In recent years it appears to be becoming an increasingly important pest in Louisiana and Mississippi.  In Texas I have received increasing reports of this beetle from unusual urban situations.  Schools have reported damage occurring to running tracks.  Businesses have reported damage to caulking in sidewalks and around doors of buildings and, last year, a car dealership reported beetles digging their way into rubber seals on recreational vehicles in a sales lot.

Black piles of sugarcane beetles at high school running track, Paris, TX.  September 13, 2010. 
Photo by Sam Adams, Pogue Construction

This week I received pictures showing the most impressive infestation I have seen or heard of so far.  The new high school running track in Paris, Texas has been inundated with these beetles attracted, apparently to stadium lights.  

Such infestations seem to be sporadic, as these beetles are not abundant in all years; but when they are, they are showing themselves to be a formidable pest.  Like crickets and many other occasional pests, sugarcane beetles are attracted to lights at night.  When sun comes up, the beetles' natural instinct is to get out of the light.  What makes this species different is its persistence, ability and strength to dig through rubbers and caulks and other usually tough building materials.  

Sugarcane beetles lift a rubberized running track off its cement base
via their digging activities. 

As with fall cricket invasions, the best and fastest solution is to turn off the lights.  In the Paris, TX high school last night, lights were turned off with a dramatic decrease in numbers.  But turning off lights is not always practical or possible.  In such cases, reducing the time that lights are left on, switching to less attractive sodium vapor light fixtures, or some combination of the two strategies should be pursued.  Pesticides are not likely to provide much relief, though frequent treatment with a residual insecticide may be somewhat useful in emergency situations like the high school where the track is being destroyed.  Early morning sweeping or vacuuming, before the beetles can cause damage, may also be helpful in some cases.  

The only good news about this situation is that such flights are temporary and will probably decline within a week or two.  Football and track coaches, however, may still not be pleased.

The Pros debate green golf courses

A mini-debate has been running recently among the small community of entomologists who work with insect pests of turf and ornamental landscapes. It has to do with the growing emergence of green golf courses and a recent story/video at time.com on the Chambers Bay links golf course on Puget Sound in Washington. The discussion was interesting and reveals some of the subtleties of varying opinions on the green movement.

Chamber's Bay is a sustainable, all-fescue, Scottish-links-style course that was built on a reclaimed gravel pit. The course uses almost no irrigation, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides. It is a showcase for cultural control and how “brown can become the new green.” This course does not look like most of the lush, immaculate courses you see around Houston, Dallas or San Antonio, or for that matter any of the PGA tournament courses you see on television.

Not every one is ready to stand up and cheer for these new courses, however. Not that I know anyone who doesn't support a golf course that uses less water, fertilizer and pesticides; but it's the fear that Chamber's Bay and other courses like it, are being set up as examples for the golfing community, with the implication, "See they can do it. Why can't all courses be like that?"

According to entomologist Dave Shetlar, Ohio State University, "Climate makes all the difference when it comes to having diseases, weeds and insects." Just because a course can be successful using a low-input approach along Puget Sound, it doesn't mean that acceptable course conditions can be maintained in Houston, Texas or Augusta, Georgia, where disease, weed and insect pressure is many times higher.

Shetlar worries that folks who are eager to jump on the “green wagon” will cause trouble for other courses trying to maintain tournament-grade turf. He points to the eastern Canadian provinces, whose governments have recently banned “cosmetic” pesticide and fertilizer use in urban landscapes. The one exception so far has been golf courses. "Now that a couple of courses have claimed that they don’t need fertilizer and pesticides, the government regulators are looking again at the exemption that they gave golf courses [and consider eliminating the exemption]." If this happens, he said, there will be a lot of unhappy golf players and grief among golf course managers. He cites pressure from the PGA, which has stated that they won’t allow play on “sub-standard” courses.

Dr. Dan Potter, Professor of Entomology from the University of Kentucky, has a different perspective. While acknowledging that golf course settings vary widely in climate, soils, water requirements, golfer expectations and pest pressure, the idea that golf courses need not approach visual perfection is the significant issue with Chamber's Bay. Quoting professional golfer Bo van Pelt at the British Open, he said: “St. Andrews [arguably, the premier golf links course in the world] shows that every course doesn’t have to be immaculate, green, watered, manicured. There are different ways to play golf. And this way is great.”

According to Potter, "American golfers have traditionally preferred to play on velvet-green, immaculately-groomed courses. Watching the Masters at Augusta National on a high-definition color TV sure sets the bar high. But socio-cultural perceptions can change... Marketing and consumer education can speed that change."

Potter also notes that today's turf insecticides are much less toxic than many of the older ones, and that insecticides are necessary to prevent turf destruction in some settings.

"[Research has shown that] “organic golf” does not work in many, perhaps most settings. Clearly insecticides are needed in many circumstances. But all over the world there is recognition that water use and other golf course inputs can be reduced without compromising quality of play. The USGA has invested $30 million in environmental research. About 2700 US courses have earned Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status. GCSAA’s Environmental Institute for Golf and USGA/PGA/Audubon International’s 'Golf and the Environment' promote sustainable resource management. ...I’m encouraged that USGA has selected a less-than-aesthetically perfect course committed to sustainable management for its signature tournament."

Potter's point is that if people's perception of what is meant by an attractive golf course can change, then golf course superintendents will feel the freedom to cut back on some of the intensive management practices in use at many courses today. We should cheer, not fear, courses like Chamber's Bay, for leading the PR charge towards a different ideal on the links.

So why blog here to PMPs about golf courses? It has to do with consumer demand. The golf course experience, whether we realize it or not, affects the way professionals are called to manage urban landscapes. Until there were immaculate greens and emerald fairways in north Texas, many Texans were happy with a basic grass/weeds mix, or even (before that) the traditional raked dirt front lawn. I don't think we'll ever go back to black dirt lawns in my community, but I know from seeing them that urban landscapes designed with native trees and prairie plants can be just as, if not more, attractive than the bermudagrass/crape myrtle/holly formal landscapes so common in north Texas cities. On the other hand legislators should be aware that management practices that work in Canada or Washington state or Maine, may not work or be acceptable in the sun belt, home of the thousand plagues. 

PMPs will do well to follow this green debate, as this is affecting anyone whose business includes landscape maintenance.  Besides, it seems like a good excuse to get out on the golf course more.  Chalk it up to market research.

Beautiful ant pics

Brachymyrmex ants from Alex Wild, North American ants.

If you've got a good microscope and occasionally get unusual ants to identify, you might benefit from this site from Alex Wild, a photographer and biologist from Illinois.  If you've ever tried to photograph ants you should have special appreciation for the beauty and clarity of these images.


The pictures do not take the place of a good key and identification guide, but never underestimate the power of good pictures in helping identify insects.  If you are from Texas, another excellent ant ID reference is Ant Genera of Texas, available through the Texas AgriLife Bookstore.

NPDES legislative update

Earlier this month I sent a long post trying to summarize the latest legal developments concerning the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and commercial pesticide applications.  I'm not going to be long-winded today, other than to say that there has been a lot of opposition to the court's decision to consider label-approved pesticide applications to, or over, water as a discharge of pollutants.  As a result, legislation was introduced on August 5th to explicitly exempt pesticides from other permitting requirements when pesticides are applied according to an approved label.  If passed, the bill would essentially side-step the legal ruling that declared certain pesticides as pollutants and requiring them to obtain an NDPES permit.  According to Senator Lincoln (D-AR), the bill's sponsor,

“Our legislation is very simple: as long as a producer is complying with FIFRA, then no Clean Water Act permit will be required. During the more than 35 years since the enactment of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has never required a permit for the application of FIFRA-registered crop protection products. Our bill would extend this common-sense approach and avoid duplicative, unnecessary burdens on our farmers, foresters, and ranchers.”

I've not had time to study response to this legislation, but I thought I would let you know about it before it's old news.  Here's a link to the bill at govtrack.  It's interesting that the drafters decided to amend FIFRA rather than the Clean Water Act.  This strategy is likely due to the hope that the bill will receive a more sympathetic hearing in the Agriculture Committee, and is therefore more likely to be passed out of committee. Stay tuned for more developments in this lively bit of pesticide history.

Save that skin! Snake sheds can be useful for ID

The southern copperhead snake, Agkistrodon controtrix, with its
banded pattern blends in well with the forest floor.  Note the
triangular-shaped head.

A client came into our office last week with what was for me an unusual sample.  Snake skins (or sheds, as they are called) are not commonly brought to entomologists, though I suspect that most pest control businesses see snake samples regularly enough.  The shed in this case was discovered under a sofa in a home, and the alarmed homeowner wanted to know (reasonably enough) if it was from a poisonous snake.

Now it might not immediately occur to most people to worry about worry about what species of snake they have in their home.  A snake skin mysteriously appearing in the living room would be cause enough for total panic for most people, regardless of species.  But wanting to know whether a shed is from a venomous snake or not is a sensible request.  Shed skins can provide excellent clues to the identity of a snake and, if nothing else, can comfort a customer by relieving them of the worry that a fanged, potentially-lethal reptile might be lurking in the laundry basket.

To recognize venomous snakes, it's first important to know which snakes are venomous.  There are dozens of species of venomous snakes in the U.S., but it's relatively easy to recognize the three major genera and four major kinds of venomous snakes.  If you can recognize these snakes, you can recognize any of the bad players you're likely to encounter in this country.

• Coral snakes.  The only North American members of the infamous snake family Elapidae, which includes the cobras, mambas, kraits and tiger snakes (found only in the Old World).  Coral snakes are relatively secretive and less likely to be encountered around residential areas.  They are strongly ringed with red, yellow and black; although there are several more common snake species that share this color characteristic.  What distinguishes coral snakes is that the two warning colors, red and yellow, touch each other.  Other, non-venomous mimics (like milk snakes and king snakes), always have a black band separating the yellow and red bands.  Hence the old Boy Scout rhyme really works: "Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack". 
• Copperheads.  Copperheads, water mocassins and rattlesnakes all belong to the family Viperidae, subfamily Crotalinae.  All pit vipers have triangular-shaped heads that are wider than the neck, and specialized facial pits between the nostril and eye that are used for sensing the body heat of prey.  Copperheads are brownish in color with bell-shaped markings on the sides (see image) and are difficult to see amidst dead leaves on a forest floor.  Copperheads are one of the more commonly encountered snakes around homes near wooded areas in the eastern half of the U.S. 
• Cottonmouths (water moccasins).  Cottonmouth snakes belong to the same genus as copperhead snakes (Agkistrodon), but are associated with aquatic habitats.  One of the most feared venomous snakes, they are often confused with harmless water snakes.  Their pit viper characteristics, often aggressive behavior and white mouths help distinguish them from water and other dark-colored snakes. These snakes are less likely to be encountered by PMPs, unless the account is close to water and in the southeastern quarter of the U.S.
• Rattlesnakes.  Two genera of snakes are classified as rattlesnakes, so-named because of a series of loose, horny segments born at the tip of the tail that make a rattling sound when vibrated.  Various species of these snakes are found throughout the contiguous U.S. These may be common around homes, schools and businesses in certain areas, especially in the more arid parts of the western U.S.

One way to distinguish most venomous from non-venomous snake sheds is to examine the scale pattern on the underside of the tail section.  Most snakes with double rows of scales from the anus to the tip of the tail can be assumed to be non-venomous (except for coral snakes).  Such scales should be visible on a complete shed snake skin.  Illustration taken from Roger Conant, A Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern/Central North America.

All snakes, both venomous and non-venomous, shed their skins several times a year.  Snake sheds may remain complete and intact, or may frequently come off in sections.  Sheds may show up in a yard, under a home, or even occasionally indoors.  If a customer calls to report finding a snake skin, ask them to keep it until you can visit.  Nathan Haislip of the Fort Worth Zoo's Department of Ectotherms (a fancy term for insects, reptiles, and amphibians) was kind enough to share his advice on how to recognize whether a shed is from a venomous or non-venomous snake. He suggests:

• If the head section is present and intact, look to see if it's arrow-shaped (triangular) or if you can detect a pit located just below an imaginary line between the eye and nostril.  These two characteristics identify a snake as a pit viper, the most common family of venomous snakes in the U.S. The coral snake is the only other venomous snake in North America without these characteristics.  
• If the head is missing or damaged, another character to look for is the pattern of scales on the bottom of the tail, behind the anus or ventor.  If the scales form more than one row, the skin is not from a rattlesnake, copperhead, or cottonmouth. 
• If there is a tip to the tail of your snake skin, then you definitely know you aren't dealing with a rattlesnake because the tip is the rattle and the shed doesn't continue past the rattle. 
• Looking for color patterns left behind on the skin can also be helpful.  Copperhead sheds, for example, may show the characteristic banding patterns of that species.  Diamondback rattlesnakes should have  the distinctive diamond pattern visible, depending on the quality of the shed. 
• If you have access to a local herpetologist or zoo with a reptile collection, you may be able to get more precise on the identification from a skin alone.  Put the shed into a protective box and save it for an expert to evaluate. 

 All this illustrates why pest control is such an interesting profession.  You never know what kind of questions, or samples, you will encounter on a given day.

Treating fire ants in electrical equipment

Fire ants and other ants are attracted to the warmth and electrical fields associated with outdoor electrical equipment.  This electrical insulation has been chewed and wires bared by fire ants.

Although I blogged about fire ants and electrical equipment over a year ago, it's a subject that deserves repeated attention, especially during these hottest days of the year.  This is the time of year when damage to electrical equipment, and especially air conditioners, is especially troublesome.  One of the less recognized economic impacts of fire ants is the damage they can do to air conditioners, traffic signal controllers, landscape lighting, well pumps, and pad-mounted transformer boxes.  Such damage costs Texans millions of dollars every year. 

One of the oft-forgotten benefits of having a professional service controlling fire ant is the protection of such sensitive equipment.  By providing fire ant control in lawns and landscapes, PMPs provide an important first line of defense for electrical equipment. And control of ants in the equipment itself is a useful, and sometimes critical, second line of defense.  Fortunately, there effective products for this second approach.

Pad-mounted electrical transformers (box in foreground) are
common in residential areas throughout Texas and the
southern states.

Many years ago I was approached by a north Texas utility company to evaluate different products for keeping fire ants out of electrical transformer boxes, you know those ubiquitous green boxes found throughout residential neighborhoods in Texas.  The utility company rarely services these boxes, but when they do they wanted to be able to treat a box quickly and cheaply with a product that would keep fire ants out for a long time (years). 

Unfortunately, we're still looking for the perfect product or long-term treatment for fire ant control in electrical equipment.  But this doesn't mean that there aren't some helpful products out there.  In my research, we found that granular formulations of bifenthrin, tefluthrin and even chlorpyrifos would keep fire ants out of electrical equipment for a year or more. Depending on the label directions of specific products, you should be able to apply a light layer of these insecticides into the base of many types of electrical equipment to suppress fire ant activity for at least a year.

More recently, Molly Keck, our extension IPM program specialist in San Antonio, looked at an additional, novel treatment to keep fire ants out of transformers. In her study, she evaluated an easy-to-apply permethrin-impregnated plastic tape strip that could be placed around the concrete openings inside these (locked) transformer boxes, and found that they worked well to exclude fire ants for 16 months.  These tests, I can attest, are difficult to set up and conduct; but despite their relatively small sample sizes, these products do work.

Keck and extension entomologist Bart Drees also published a fact sheet on the subject of different methods to exclude fire ants from electrical equipment. In it they mention a variety of different products and list manufacturers of these materials if you want to obtain samples for your own use or testing. 

I encourage you to be aware of the different fire ant control options for protecting electrical equipment.  I suspect that this is a service that few of you are offering right now; but it seems to me that treatment of electrical equipment would be a great way to distinguish yourselves from your competition while saving your customers significant money.  It may also save you a customer. 

If you want to bring out the revolutionary fiery spirit of a Texan, let the air conditioner break down in hundred-degree weather due to fire ants.  And I for one wouldn't want to be in that line of fire.