The army of glazed ants was pressing down on the border, and the peasants were helpless! The ant infestation spread throughout Taiwan, and the government did nothing.

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Wart-breasted glass ants are rampant, making all the farmers in the West Lake in Miaoli miserable! This kind of ant will not only bite, even if fully armed, it may still get into the cracks in the clothes, but also spray formic acid, so that farmers can not open their eyes and even find it difficult to breathe.

Wart-breasted glass ants have broken out in central and southern China in recent years, harassing residents and hindering farming. However, the responsibilities of the central ministries are unclear and the local governments are short of resources. As a result, the ant scourge is becoming more and more serious.

The army of glass ants overwhelms the territory, and the farmers can't bear to be disturbed by it.

"the harvest time is more than twice as long!" Zhang Zhongzhi, a farmer in the West Lake, said that originally all he had to do was to cut off the fruit directly, but now he had to cut off the grapefruit with a long-handle scissors, put it on the ground, and then use an air spray gun to spray off the ants on each fruit one by one.

Another farmer, Zhang Jiarong, also suffered. A pear orchard was planted near his home, but the pouch of the pear turned into a ready-made mansion of glass ants. He took off the bag from the tree in spite of the ant attack, and swarms of ants gushed out of the bag. Ants also invade the home, which is unbearable.

Longdong Village in the West Lake of Miaoli began to develop into an organic village ten years ago. Wendan, pomelo and other citrus fruits are specialties, but now there is another specialty in the village: wart-breasted glass ants. The back of the large leaves of the grapefruit tree is the place where the ants like to nest and gather.

The usual agricultural law is to spray pesticides directly, but organic farmers cannot do so, so they have no choice but to endure harassment, but it is getting worse year after year. And this kind of ant will not directly harm the fruit, the above water pear, grapefruit are still intact, so it is not a "agricultural pest", there is no recommended drug for it.

The water pear (Photo / Cai Jiashan) densely covered with glass ants forms a "super community" explosive hazard, and the ant nest is scattered and difficult to control.

Wart-breasted glass ants are mostly distributed in the central and southern part of China, and the harm has become more and more serious in the past five years, not only hindering the work of the farm, but also driving straight into the home. Lin Zongqi, an ant expert in the Department of Biology at Chang normal University, said that about seven or eight years ago, people in the south began to report the harm of wart-breasted glass ants, and then it continued to expand, and disasters occurred one after another in Chiayi, Nantou, Miaoli, and Hsinchu. "although this kind of ant has been listed in the historical list, its population pattern was not like this in the past, and now it has become an explosive hazard."

Lin Zongqi explains that wart-breasted glass ants are now occupying the territory in the form of a "super community," that is, within an area of hundreds to thousands of square meters, there are tens of thousands to more than 100,000 queens, and all of them are ants in the same nest. They all know each other, can't fight, and can help each other.

Therefore, the prevention and control of verrucous glass ants is particularly difficult, because unlike other ants have gathered fixed ant nests, there are obvious targets to start. "they belong to makeshift nests, and they all live in plant crevices," such as cracks in bamboo tubes, the back of leaves, iron seams, and inside water pipes. When moving, "like a nomadic people, when other ants go, the queen follows." Therefore, when people kill ants, they can only kill a small part of the huge community.

And the wart-breasted glass ant is a kind of arboreal ant, different from the terrestrial ant, they like to climb everywhere along the electric wire and water pipe. If it is sprayed with insecticides, it will flee when it smells a strong smell of repellent, and the wires and water pipes will become "highways". On the contrary, ants will use this to expand their territory and lead to the places where human beings live. "often this house is sprayed, and the ants run next door and change into two, and then ten, and the spray becomes wider and wider." Lin Zongqi said helplessly.

Verrucous glass ants nest behind towel gourd leaves (photo / Cai Jiashan)

Verrucous glass ants can build nests on the back of the leaves of fruit trees (photo courtesy of Zhang Zhongzhi) and symbiosis with aphids. They can also drive away natural enemies and indirectly harm farming.

The cause of the ant outbreak remains to be clarified. Hsu Feng-chuan, a doctoral student at National Taiwan University who studies wart-breasted glass ants, believes that it may be that there are more food resources in the environment, that is, honeydew secreted by aphids and shell worms. If there is no frequent control, the population of these insects will grow and attract ants. In addition, the hotter climate will also increase the breeding speed and hatching number of insects.

What is certain, however, is that "ants contribute to the number of aphids and shell insects, which needs to be paid attention to," says Hsu Fengquan. Wart-breasted glass ants and aphids and shell insects are often seen in many crops such as grapefruit, bananas, lemons, Sakyamuni and longan. Glass ants are dense, which will protect pests and prevent natural enemies from preying. For example, if ladybugs come to eat shell bugs, glass ants will spray formic acid with their jaws to drive them away.

Therefore, although wart-breasted glass ants do not directly gnaw on crops, they may indirectly lead to agricultural damage. However, agricultural administrative units do not identify it as a pest, and the resources invested in prevention and control are limited, while environmental protection units believe that it is a household pest and should be dealt with by the public. On the other hand, glass ants do not spread diseases, unlike the vector mosquitoes of dengue fever, which can be responsible for by the Department of Disease Control of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Regardless of the result, glass ants are attacking cities and grabbing land on a large scale, becoming more and more rampant year by year, and local governments are so short of funds that they are unable to buy chemicals and prevent and control them on a large scale.