Crazy ants" swarm exterminator Tom Rasberry's hands in a Pearland, Texas, field with a heavy infestation.
Although the new pests don't pack the powerful sting of fire ants, scientists say they can do as much damage, killing wildlife and shorting out electrical equipment. Crazy ants have an additional trait that is proving especially irksome: They like to hang out where people live and are difficult to dislodge once they get inside buildings.
Called crazy ants because they scramble in all directions rather than trudging along a straight track, the ants carpet the ground and swarm over anything in their way -- plants, animals or humans. Scientists think the ants originated in the Caribbean.
The bugs, technically known as paratrechina species near pubens, form multiqueen supercolonies and breed by the millions, especially during the summer. They have now spread to 14 Texas counties, mostly around Houston, but have been found in three new spots this summer, including San Antonio 200 miles to the west.
In Florida, similar insects are known as Caribbean crazy ants (paratrechina pubens), and they have been spreading rapidly for about five years, said Roberto M. Pereira, associate research scientist at the University of Florida.
In Texas, the bugs are known as Rasberry crazy ants, after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator in this Houston suburb who has been warning about the new ants since he first found them in 2002. They "pose a clear and present danger to our way of life," he warns on a blog he devotes to the bugs.
Across south Texas, the insects have been shorting out electrical sockets, air conditioners and, at Cindy Fitch's house in Pearland, the transformer that controls her floodlights. She has replaced it three times in the past two years.
"I always thought they were just a nuisance," she said recently outside her two-story home, "but now I've found they tear stuff up."
The Port of Houston now gets weekly pest-control visits to control the ants, which damaged backup power equipment there about a year ago, spokesman Edwin Henry said.
Eradicating the bugs is difficult, experts say, partly because they move their nests the minute anyone disturbs them. No baits -- poisons that insects carry into their colonies -- have yet been formulated specifically for these ants, which eat everything from hotdogs to honey, but don't like fire-ant bait. They do, however, eat fire ants.
Termidor, which chemical titan BASF AG originally developed for termites, is government-approved for keeping the ants at bay, but it must be applied by professional exterminators at a cost of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Over-the-counter pesticide sprays leave piles of dried corpses that look like drifts of brown sand, but still barely dent the ants' numerous populations.
Mounds of dead ants were piled up by a back door of the First Presbyterian Church in Pearland last week when Mr. Rasberry was called in. Now the church is facing thousands of dollars of extermination costs, said Rev. Winifred Jones.
Last year, Mr. Jones said, he spent $300 on chemicals just to keep circling ants out of his nearby house. "They reminded me of the children of Jericho, marching around Jerusalem," he said.
The ants live happily in human environments, said Dr. Roger Gold, head of the urban entomology program at Texas A&M, noting that people are responsible for much of the ants' spread, transporting them in objects such as potted plants.
He and other scientists are eager to study the ants more, but funding has been hard to come by. So far, much of the limited research available has been done by Dr. Gold's graduate students.
One of them, Jason Meyers, now works as a market-development specialist at BASF. He said the Texas ants act like those that infested Colombia a decade ago, asphyxiating chickens and causing farmers to flee.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has agreed to pay $30,000 to study new sightings of the insects in Texas.
Several Texas beekeepers reported in August that the ants were killing their hives. "It's not spread out far enough to where the industry is abuzz about this problem -- but it will be," said Jerry Stroope of Pearland, who has about 2,000 hives.
The Texas Department of Agriculture is surveying other beekeepers, said Bryan Black, a spokesman for the agency, which organized a task force on the ants with the USDA last November.
Mr. Rasberry, who serves on the task force, said its only accomplishment so far has been to put out a brochure. He's lobbying government officials for more-aggressive action.
"It's in my best interest for these things to spread everywhere," said Mr. Rasberry, who notes they have been good for his exterminator business. "But I was born and raised in Texas, and I have a real concern about the impact these critters could have on our state."
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