Image of the Day: Fire Ants And The Scientists Who Love Them

The hilly mounds of dirt where fire ants make their home are actually solariums that collect heat to warm its residents. Below ground, a mature ant colony can encompass about 300 feet of underground tunnels, or about 20,000 fire ant body lengths.

Pictured above is a zinc cast of the underground chambers of one. It is composed of many vertical shafts connecting horizontal chambers.

These are just some of the fun facts included in Walter R. Tschinkel's encyclopedic new tome on the critters, called "The Fire Ants."

Tschinkel is a myrmecologist--a scientist who studies ants--at Florida State University and his 723 page book helps scientists and the general public alike better understand, if not appreciate, the social biology and ecology of a creature widely regarded as a pest.

Tschinkel points out that the fire ants bad rep is often undeserved. He sets the record straight on the 50-year-old misconception that fire ants are responsible for shrinking native ant populations. Turns out it's not the competition with fire ants, as commonly believed, but rather the ecological havoc created by disturbed habitats--fire ants thrive in them, natives don't.

Tschinkel also points out that the opportunistic fire ants devour termites, ticks, weevils, mosquitos and other major threats to Southern plants, property and people.

--Ker Than

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Credit:  Charles F. Badland