Modeling Temperature-Dependent Range Limits for the Fire Ant Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the United States

By M. Korzukhin, S. Porter, L. Thompson, S. Wiley. 2001

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We predict the future range of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta Buren within the United States based on climate and its current extreme distributions. To reach that goal, a dynamic model of colony growth with two time steps per day was formulated that operates by colony area, S, and alate production, a. Colony growth rate depended on daily maximum and minimum soil temperatures. Temperature records at 4,537 meteorological stations within the current (near 1.5 million km2) and potential range of S. invicta were obtained from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. At each station, a colony was allowed to grow and lifetime female alate production was calculated. Estimated alate production was then examined at current extremes of the fire ant distribution at selected locations in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Estimates from these locations were used to define four zones of colony proliferation success: certain, possible, undemonstrated, and improbable. An annual precipitation limit (510 mm) was selected to indicate regions where arid conditions may prohibit growth in areas without supplemental water sources. Results of the model predict that S. invicta will likely move 80–150 km north in Oklahoma and Arkansas. It will also likely continue expanding into portions of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware in the east and New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Nevada, and maybe even Washington and Utah in the west.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c46b0557a3d3a0de847cf97233be082a3f6672d

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Citations in the corpus

Modelling the potential geographic distribution of invasive ant species in New Zealand (2007, methodology): “The model of Korzukhin et al. (2001) has also been applied on a global scale by Morrison et al. (2003).”
A Climate Model of the Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): Implications for Invasion of New Regions, Particularly Oceania (2005, methodology): “The need for simple tools arises because there is rarely enough empirical data available on biological processes to build rigorous, predictive population models for even the most intensely studied species (Sutherst and Maywald 1985, Korzukhin et al. 2001).”
The little fire ant, Wasmannia auropunctata: distribution, impact, and control. (2003, unknown): “The future spread of W. auropunctata could be computer modeled using climate data, as has been done with the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta (Korzukhin et al. 2001).”
Potential Global Range Expansion of the Invasive Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta (2004, methodology): “Korzukhin et al. (2001) determined a critical threshold of 3900 alates to be an estimate of ‘certain’ colony proliferation success, based on the coldest areas where S. invicta is known to survive across the landscape.”
Environmental data sets matter in ecological niche modelling: an example with Solenopsis invicta and Solenopsis richteri. (2007, background): “As such, a detailed understanding of the invasive potential of these species is of considerable interest ‐ several previous studies have addressed these questions as well (Stoker et al. , 1994; Killion & Grant, 1995; Korzukhin et al. , 2001; Morrison et al. , 2004; Fitzpatrick & Weltzin, 2005; Sut”