Entomologist Emily Althoff walks ahead of me through the Enns Entomology Museum at the University of Missouri, which appears to simply be a large room filled with hundreds of filing cabinets.
“We actually have one of the largest university collections in the US … I think there's like maybe two that might be larger?" Althoff said. "But it's huge. We have 7 million specimens.”
Althoff is an urban entomologist for MU Extension and Lincoln University, and today, we’re talking about the Asian needle ant, an invasive species that has recently been identified in Missouri.
“I started tracking it on iNaturalist to see, ‘Okay, where is this thing and is it close to Missouri?’” Althoff said. “And then once we thought that we might have it, I came in here to compare samples — and let me see if we can find it.”
She stops and pulls out three or four large glass-topped wooden boxes before finding the right one. Then she points to a tiny ant in the upper right corner – the only Asian needle ant specimen they have.
“We came in here to see if we'd ever had any reports of it prior. We did not,” Althoff said. “So, I wanted to make sure that it actually was the first time we were reporting it and not just a reintroduction.. It's been a fascinating introduction to how invasive species identification works.”
Althoff said the process of identifying the invasive species actually began last year when a citizen in Springfield, Missouri, uploaded a picture of “weird” small ant they didn’t recognize to iNaturalist, a nature identification app.
Once she saw the photo, Althoff sent the image off to a colleague at the US Forest Service in Georgia, where the ant is more established, and headed down to Springfield to collect a specimen.
“I felt like a little detective,” she said “I also was able to confirm this particular insect because the second I picked one up, I got stung. So, I can confirm that the sting is not pleasant.”
Beyond “not pleasant,” a sting from the Asian needle ant can actually cause allergic and anaphylactic reactions in people who are also allergic to wasp and bee stings.
“For folks that have anaphylactic reactions to things like bees or wasp stings – ants are also related to those two. They all fall into the same order of Hymenoptera,” Althoff said.
The ant can be hard to identify by sight because it is very small and relatively nondescript, but Althoff said there are several identifiers that could help people avoid the stinging ant. It tends to prefer forests and wood-rich areas, it has a distinctive stinger and it has a lighter reddish-brown color on the legs.
“To keep yourself physically safe, don't move firewood,” Althoff said. “Just try to make sure that you're not grabbing something that you can't see the underside of or, if you have material that you haven't picked up in a while, maybe give it a little shake – kind of like what we do with brown recluses.”
Althoff added that there are also potential environmental repercussions that come with the Asian needle ant getting into Missouri, which include outcompeting native ant species, commandeering native pollinator nesting sites and decimating termite populations.
While this might sound like a good thing, Althoff stressed that the balance of the native environment is a delicate thing and invasive species can cause detrimental cascading effects.
“If there are no termites, then now we have this pile of dead wood in our forests, potentially enhancing risk for forest fires,” Althoff said. “And so, termites actually are really beneficial when they're not in our houses.”
Ultimately, Althoff said experts don't believe the Asian needle ant is “brand new” to the state. This is simply the first positive identification of the insect.
Althoff asks that Missourians report any possible encounters with the ant, as they do not know how wide spread the insect is throughout the state.
But be sure to not squash the insect as it makes positive identification impossible. Instead, she suggested placing the specimen in a freezer safe container and contacting the Missouri Department of Conservation.
