The red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), or simply RIFA, is one of over 280 species in the widespread genus Solenopsis. Although the red imported fire ant is native to South America, it has become a pest in the southern United States, Australia, Poland, Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian. There are also reports of ant hills in Macau, the former Portuguese enclave that borders the province of Guangdong. RIFA are known to have a strong, painful, and persistent irritating sting that often leaves a pustule on the skin.
Read more about Red Imported Fire Ant: Overview, Morphology, Queen and Worker Behavior, Countermeasures, Genomics
Famous quotes containing the words red, imported, fire and/or ant:
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 1:18.
“If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack,
You may get a bland smile from these sages;
But should it, by chance, be imported from France,
Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Man, became man through work, who stepped out of the animal kingdom as transformer of the natural into the artificial, who became therefore the magician, man the creator of social reality, will always stay the great magician, will always be Prometheus bringing fire from heaven to earth, will always be Orpheus enthralling nature with his music. Not until humanity itself dies will art die.”
—Ernst Fischer (1899–1972)
“The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And frog peeps out o’ the fountain.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)