Photo by V. Miller
Jan. 19, 2005
Fire Ants
Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta), the Unbeatable
Blake Alexander Thompson, 12, Gainesville, Fla.
Second Place, Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, 2004
Project background: The omnipresent plague of fire ants in Blake's yard has pestered his family to no end. His parents do not like pesticides, so they have tried soap, citrus oils, and other organic products to eliminate the fire ants—but have had little success. He wanted to test commercial fire ant baits as an alternative.
Tactics and results: Blake first defined three similar plots of 1/8 acre each and counted the number of fire ants in each one. He placed index cards with peanut butter as a trap 2 feet from each ant mound, then collected the cards, froze them, and counted the ants. He used one field as a control, another to test the ant killer Zep, and the third to test the ant killer Amdro. He counted the ant populations weekly in each field.
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| Photo by V. Miller |
Blake found that the commercial pesticides temporarily decreased ant populations. But by the end of week four, ant populations had returned to baseline values. The original, treated ant mounds were empty, but new mounds had sprung up.
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