Invading Argentine ant hordes carry a virus that attacks bees
ANT FIGHT Invasive Argentine ants, shown in a threesome attacking a native New Zealand ant, carry hitchhiking viruses, a new survey says.
Phil Lester
The first survey of viruses in the globally invasive Argentine ant brings both potentially bad and good news.
One of two viruses identified to be actively reproducing in Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) is a known threat to honeybees, says Philip Lester, a community ecologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Called deformed wing virus, it might use ants as a reservoir, spreading to bees visiting the same flowers or getting raided for honey by the sweets-loving ants, Lester and his colleagues suggest September 9 in Biology Letters.
The other virus is new to science. Christened LHUV-1 (pronounced “love-one”), it belongs to the dicistrovirus family, which includes many insect pathogens. Whether LHUV-1 actually sickens Argentine ants or any other creature remains to be seen. If it does, Lester says, the virus might prove useful to check the spread of the ants. That’s a distant dream, he cautions. For now, research is at the stage of “Wow, there’s viruses!” he says.
