MIAMI, March 13 (UPI) -- Federal scientists are unleashing "decapitating phorid flies" in a long-range effort to get rid of fire ants in south Florida and throughout the South.
The millimeter-long South American fly has already been released on Florida's Gulf Coast and in eight Southern states. It dives on the red fire ants, decapitates them and eats the contents of their heads.
The flies are being released on the grounds of Baptist Hospital south of Miami this week where several mounds have been found containing red fire ants, the most dangerous of the breed.
Sanford Porter, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said the flies will spread in Florida north to Fort Lauderdale and west to Naples within five years.
Porter said it will be several years before the flies' impact on the fire ant population can be determined.
The fly was first discovered in 1920 by Thomas Borgmeier, a Franciscan monk in Rio de Janeiro.
But nobody discovered how the flies killed the ants until Porter took a trip to Brazil in 1992 to find out.
The female fly injects an egg in a fire ant in a split second before the ant can defend itself in most instances. The egg hatches inside the ant a few days later and the larva, or maggot, makes its way into the head and releases a chemical that causes the ant's head to fall off.
"The maggot manages to eat everything inside the head," Porter said. "It cleans it out just as clean as a whistle."
The adult fly emerges from the larva more than two weeks later and lives for two or three days. In that time span, a female can deposit eggs into several dozen ants.
Scientists have documented that red fire ants were brought to Louisiana by a freighter from South America in 1929, and they spread throughout the South, making it to south Florida in the 1950s.
Fire ants pose a threat to humans, usually only children, the elderly and the 1 percent of the population allergic to their venom.
They also kill baby turtles and birds that nest on the ground.
