What is it about?
Fire ants are notoriously hard to identify to species, particularly in South America. The published characters are hard to discern, and there is a local abundance of undescribed populations, poorly-understood hybridization events, and overall morphological plasticity. Moreover, minor workers are next to useless in spotting defining characters for species identification. The present manuscript offers integrative solutions for the rapid identification of fire ants, based on chemical characters.
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Why is it important?
Correct identification of species is fundamental to any scientific investigation. In the special case of fire ants some of such species are pernicious invasive pests which are under quarantine restrictions in many ports. Therefore their precise identification being a matter of major concern.
Perspectives
This manuscript is an essential distillation of a major database compilation built over years of hard field work. The idea of releasing blueprints for fire ant identification has been around my plans since the end of my PhD however assembling up all pieces together is a difficult task, not always envisioned in individual funding grants. Hopefully, a next step for this project is sewing up with a calibrated reference collection, including all varieties of fire ants in Brazil.
Dr Eduardo G P Fox
IBCCF / UFRJ
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chemical blueprints to identifying fire ants: overview on venom alkaloids, September 2018, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press,
DOI: 10.1101/407775.
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