2005 hurricanes cut fire ant population

BATON ROUGE, La., May 9 (UPI) -- An unexpected benefit from last year's Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been a dramatic reduction in the fire ant population along the Louisiana Gulf Coast.

Insect experts at the Louisiana State University's AgCenter say fewer fire ants have been found in field studies in Southwestern Louisiana and New Orleans parishes that were flooded by salt water in Gulf of Mexico storm surges.

Linda Hooper-Bui, an LSU entomologist, says some areas inundated for long periods have no signs of the aggressive biting and stinging ants that invaded Southern U.S. states from South America in the 1900s.

"Normally, if there were ants around, we would have seen them," she told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Hooper-Bui said as families return and begin rebuild, wide areas of neighborhoods can be baited to suppress the ant menace and keep them from recolonizing areas of New Orleans.

"If fire ants are allowed to reinvade unchecked, there is a possibility that they will be the 'only ant in town' and escalate to higher numbers than before," she said in a release.