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Argentine ants
are the eensy teensy,
fast moving, black ants that make massive assaults on garbage cans and
other sources of sweet or greasy foods. From South America, they
arrived in Louisiana around 1890, in southern California in 1908.
Argentine ants wipe out native species, not by being stronger, but
simply by overpowering numbers.
A broad column
of ants moving pupae
from a flooded nest to a nearby dry one. The nest for Argentine
ants is small and shallow, under a walk or a flat slab on the ground,
more like a temporary field camp than the capital of a colony. In
fact, it turns out that there is only one colony of Argentine ants in
Southern California. It stretches from the Mexican border to the
bay of San Francisco.
In this close
view of a nest, you
can see some of the ants. There are actually many ants in the
picture, moving too fast for the shutter speed of the camera. The
white objects are pupae, often mistaken for eggs. Sometimes I
find this nest
occupied and sometimes not. I also
find nests under a board lying on concrete, in piles of dead leaves,
inside the motor housing of a kitchen mixer.
Usually the ants
are seen outside (at
least at my house) hurrying along two way trails like this one.
The problem is that during rainy winter weather when the ground gets
saturated, or during hot, dry summer days, the ants come inside where
conditions are more pleasant. In a matter of minutes myriads of
ants can appear in a bathroom (for water) or kitchen. While you
sleep, they can move their nest into any conveniently confined space.
Any raised, unobstructed path, such as
a garden hose, or as here, the top of plastic lawn edging, can be a
freeway for the ants.
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