CALL in the meat ants. That’s the new proposal for dealing with the spread of toxic across tropical Australia. Rick Shine at the University of Sydney says the have been seen feeding on cane toadlets, and thinks laying down bait to attract them to ponds where toadlets congregate until the wet season may help control their spread.
To see if this would encourage the ants to feed on native frogs as well, Shine’s team housed them with cane toads and native species. They found native frogs leapt away quickly when bitten by a meat ant, leaving them less than 1 second to latch on. The slower cane toads, however, stuck around for more than 5 seconds. “They’ve evolved in a world without big predatory ants, so instead of hopping away like a sensible frog, they just freeze,” says Shine. “That makes sense if the predator is affected by your toxin, but these ants aren’t.”
Ecologist of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, says Shine’s work to assess the complete biology of cane toads will be instrumental in controlling the pests. He says the latest proposal is interesting, but that “you would try it cautiously”.
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