Molecular and spatial insights into fire ant foraging: Unraveling predatory roles in cotton agroecosystems

Red imported fire ants (RIFA), Solenopis invicta Buren, are now widely distributed in the southeast and, presumably forage on economically important pests. Environmental conditions and seasonality affect RIFA physiology and foraging; therefore, we predict RIFA foraging to vary in response to agricultural settings leading to seasonality in prey use and roles in biological control. In one of the first papers to document food web connections of RIFA, we apply molecular gut content analysis to field collected ants, and ants collected from replicated treatments of winter cover crops in cotton agroecosystems. Molecular analysis uncovered fire ants feeding on multiple pest and non-pest prey and also confirmed predation on stink bugs. Cover crops also influenced both abundance, and predation patterns on common pests and non-pest prey. Further studies are needed to understand the antagonistic or complementarity of fire ants with other predatory arthropods in cotton systems, but these angry ants do provide biological control services on multiple cotton pests.