Review: Global invasion history of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

ANTS ARE INVADING THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! Seriously.

Ok, not a fire ant, but STILL AN ANT!!

 I grew up in Texas and California and I never had a shortage of fire ant bites. That stuff stings and itches and looks like smooth leprosy. It wasn't until I moved to Illinois at age 24 that I finally had a picnic! You never want to sit down on the grass in Texas. Today's paper provides evidence to show the history of how ants got from their luscious base of operations in Argentina to the rest of the world!!
 First, why does anyone care how ants got all over the world? It is estimated that in the U.S., ant related costs are beyond $6,000,000,000 (that is a billion). What is that in real numbers? You could pay the 2008-2009 salaries of the following NBA teams: Dallas Mavericks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls, Atlanta Hawks, Denver Nuggets, and Charlotte Bobcats AND buy all the weapons purchased by Venezuela from Russia AND develop two blockbuster drugs AND still have money left over to supersize a Double Quarter pounder combo! So, it is important to figure out how these invasive species are getting where they are getting, if only to stop impressionable youths from being bitten.

Ant bites really itch.

 The researchers asked their buddies all over the world to send them ants from many ant colonies and they sequenced several genes to see differences between each ant colony. It is not immediately apparent how knowing the differences in genetic sequences can tell you anything, so let me explain.
 Remember the game telephone where you start with a phrase such as "DON'T TELL YOUR MOTHER" and the first person tells the next person and so on and so forth. At the end of a chain of people the message has changed is now "YOU FACE A MAN WITHOUT A CROSS!" Now imagine that each incremental change was somehow recorded and you could go back and see how each change contributed to the final product. This it the idea behind comparing DNA sequences!

 So, having the sequences and comparing them, they found that ants originated in Argentina and were somehow transported to Louisiana then the southern U.S. and from there to California and, ultimately, ASIAN CONQUEST! Now, did ants from Texas colonize each Asian country individually or was one Asian country colonized and the other colonized from that one? From their DNA sequence analysis, they found that THE U.S. IS A REPEAT OFFENDER IN SPREADING THE ANT MENACE!!! The cause of the spread? Global transportation!!

 Knowing the results of the research, we have to ask: which area in the U.S. is responsible for this global contamination? Can this be narrowed to a specific company? With these questions in mind, we can begin to think about how to regulate shipping in regards to environmental contamination! Is it possible or necessary to sterilize the land around transportation areas to prevent contamination? How can you prevent contamination?