著者

田付 貞洋

出版者

日本環境動物昆虫学会

雑誌

環動昆 (ISSN:09154698)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, no.1, pp.39-45, 2008-04-15

被引用文献数

1

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Although the Argentine ant is endemic to Argentina and some neighboring regions of South America, it has been spreading mostly all over the earth during last >100 years with modern human activities. In Japan, since its settlement was first found at Hatsukaichi City, Hiroshima Pref., in 1993, its distribution range has gradually expanded mostly to east getting Yokohama Port in 2007. Particularly in invaded areas, this ant shows extraordinarily high reproductive activity based mainly on the formation of much greater "supercolony" than in the original habitats and gives serious damages of various aspects, such as disruption of ecosystems, invasion to human houses and facilities, and agricultural crop losses. In this article, I introduce characteristic biology of this ant, including unicoloniality, multi-queen system and so on, as well as pest status, colony structures and putative invasion history in Japan, and discuss how this ant so harmful in its invaded areas and propose some novel control strategies using the synthetic trail pheromone to regulate the population densities via manipulation of its trail following behavior.