Bug card No. 0130 of 1,500
Black imported fire ant
Solenopsis richteri
The black imported fire ant is a small dark ant from South America that lives in big colonies in the ground. People carried it to the United States by accident.
Lives in
South America, and now also the southern United States
What does it eat?
Like other fire ants, it eats almost anything it finds, from small insects to seeds and sweet things.
How fast is it?
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Black imported fire ant about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
For a long time scientists thought it was just a dark kind of the red imported fire ant. Now they know it is its own species.
2
It copes with cold better than its red cousin, so it can live further north.
3
It keeps spreading to new places, probably hiding in soil and plants moved for new gardens.
you asked
Most asked questions about Black imported fire ant
?Where do black imported fire ants come from?
From South America. They were carried to the United States by accident.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Solenopsis richteri
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- South America, North America
- Also known as
- BIFA
Where the facts come from
- Black imported fire ant (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by April Nobile. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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