Christmas Island Yellow Crazy Ants 2021

Worker production fluctuates but is continuous throughout the year. Crazy ants have decimated Christmas Islands red crabs. After more than seven years of research community consultation and biosecurity checks the first batch of micro-wasps have been released in Christmas Island. Yellow crazy ants were accidentally introduced to Christmas Island between 1915 and 1934.

Yellow Crazy Ant Biocontrol Christmas Island National Park

Infections have been found and treated in places like Brisbane Maryborough Cairns Townsville and many others.

Christmas island yellow crazy ants 2021. A micro-wasp from Malaysia. Before the introduction of the yellow crazy ant to Christmas Island land crabs ate many plant seedlings in the forest maintaining a relatively clear forest floor. These ants now form super-colonies with billions of individuals across hundreds of hectares.

This means using another insect to target the crazy ants food source as a way of cutting down their numbers and stop them causing so much environmental damage especially to iconic red crab populations. The ants which can form super colonies when in large densities are considered one of the worlds top 100 most. Although restricted to a relatively small area an estimated 437 million adult red crabs once lived on Christmas Island alone but the.

The Christmas Island red crab is of land crab that is endemic to Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean. By the late 1990s they had formed multiqueen colonies with incredibly high densities of ants called supercolonies. The method uses indirect biological control or biocontrol to target one of the crazy ants key food sources.

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