Yellow Crazy Ants
What are yellow crazy ants?
Yellow crazy ants are one of the world’s worst 100 invasive species (IUCN).
Yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) is one of the largest invasive ant species. They don’t bite people or animals, but they do spray acid from their abdomen. They get their name ‘crazy’ by their fast and frantic movements when disturbed. Yellow crazy ants are a threat to the Wet Tropics environment, local agriculture and our tropical lifestyle.
Yellow crazy ants are thought to have originated from Southeast Asia and arrived in Australia by shipping freight. They occur in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Christmas Island and are eradicated in New South Wales. They arrived in the port of Cairns in 2001 (QLD Government) and spread throughout Queensland including the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
Yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) is one of the largest invasive ant species. They don’t bite people or animals, but they do spray acid from their abdomen. They get their name ‘crazy’ by their fast and frantic movements when disturbed. Yellow crazy ants are a threat to the Wet Tropics environment, local agriculture and our tropical lifestyle.
Yellow crazy ants are thought to have originated from Southeast Asia and arrived in Australia by shipping freight. They occur in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Christmas Island and are eradicated in New South Wales. They arrived in the port of Cairns in 2001 (QLD Government) and spread throughout Queensland including the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
The Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce
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Sadly, our Wet Tropics World Heritage Area came under threat in 2012 through the incursion of yellow crazy ants. It was making our rainforest fall silent, as native insects, frogs and even birds fell victim to these invasive ants.
Residents of Kuranda and the wider Cairns and Tableland community rallied to protect homes and formed a group under the not-for-profit community group Kuranda Envirocare. This is now known as the Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce (the Taskforce). We are a group united by the quest to stop the invasion and impact of yellow crazy ants in our environment, homes and lifestyle. We live amongst the world’s oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforest and we are here to protect it. We help the Wet Tropics Management Authority’s (WTMA) Yellow Crazy Ant Eradication Program by raising awareness, carrying out surveys and, in the past, have treated the 31ha infestation at Russett Park. The Taskforce at Russett Park was essential in delivering the groundwork to treat the infestation, as the WTMA had limited staff and resources at the time. We have 150 Taskforce members. We have the network to get things done and who have a vested interest in eradication. We're there observing effects and are really effective monitors. We are working with the local Djabuguy Bulmba Rangers - Land & Sea Ranger Program. Our task force coordinator organises the community task force and communicates with the YCA Wet Tropics Management Authority eradication project team.
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Yellow crazy ants swarm. When unchecked they breed into large swarms and can raft down waterways.
Taskforce volunteers, Bulmba Rangers and Wet Tropics YCA Eradication team.
Yellow crazy ants have been able to overpower this gecko and are now consuming it
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Where Do They Live?
The yellow crazy ant is a ground-dwelling species that may also be found in trees and artificially elevated habitats such as houses or machinery.
The ant can be found in natural or man-made habitat. Nests may be found in a wide range of places, for example underground, in leaf litter, in piles of vegetation or rubbish, in tree stumps, in housing or machinery, or almost any dark sheltered space with the right temperature and humidity in which the ants have access to food.The yellow crazy ant is not typically found in elevations above 1200m (Gruber et al, 2016).
How Do They Spread?
Without human assistance yellow crazy ants have been documented to spread 37m to 402m per year in Seychelles. On Christmas Island, they spread 1100 meters in one year.
Humans are responsible for most of the long-distance spread of yellow crazy ants via movement of colonies or fragments of colonies on agricultural or earthworks machinery or in soil, green waste, or any other infested material.
On their own, colonies typically disperse by ‘budding’, a process where a queen leaves the colony, accompanied by some workers to establish a new nest. In riparian areas spread may also occur if colony fragments are washed downstream when water levels rise after significant rainfall events.
Typically, the budding technique results in a relatively slow rate of dispersal and manageable localised infestations. Winged yellow crazy ant queens are not known to disperse by flying to new locations.
