A recent article in Florida Today (FT) “Invasive fire ants spread, get boost from climate change in Florida” is not just false—it’s a classic case of alarmist reporting that ignores decades of entomological and ecological data. Fire ants have been widespread in Florida for decades, the existing climate being conducive to their flourishing across much of the country. The climate has not changed in any meaningful way to make the spread of fire any colonies to new locations more likely.
An excerpt from the FT article states:
With temperatures rising and winters getting milder, invasive fire ants are finding it easier to expand their range across Florida. Climate change, scientists say, is giving the ants a leg up, pushing them farther north and deeper into the state.
It’s a tidy story for headline writers, but it glosses over the well-established reasons behind the spread of fire ants—namely, accidental introduction through global and regional trade, poorly regulated movement of nursery stock and soil, and the absence of natural predators in North America.
The science is clear: fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) first arrived in Mobile Alabama via South American shipping in the 1930s—not because of climate change, but thanks to lax port controls as documented by USDA’s APHIS website. Their spread consistently is tracked with expansions of highways and railroads, plus the movement of landscaping materials, not minor temperature shifts. Even the University of Florida’s IFAS Extension points to “human-assisted movement of infested sod, soil, nursery plants, and other materials” as the primary culprit. This becomes clear when you look at the timeline of fire ants in Florida based on multiple sources of data, including a peer-reviewed study from the University of Texas.
This table summarizes the timeline:
This timeline clearly underscores that the fire ant invasion in Florida has been overwhelmingly complicit with human-mediated transport and habitat alteration—not a result of minor climate fluctuations. Indeed, as the timeline shows, fire ants first landed in northern Florida, the portion of the state that experiences cooler, sometimes freezing temperatures, far more often than any other region of the state. The red imported fire ant’s rapid spread is attributed to its ability to adapt to new environments, its lack of natural predators in the US, and its accidental dispersal through cargo, soil, and nursery stock.
The facts show that fire ants spread explosively in the 1940s through 1970s northward from the coasts, during a period when the Earth was modestly cooling, decades before “global warming” became a household term. Nor is there any evidence the modest warming experienced in North Florida, or elsewhere in what is already fire ant range, has made the invasive pest more likely to flourish than it already does.
To claim otherwise, as Florida Today does, is journalistic malpractice. By promoting climate alarmism, while ignoring the data, Florida Today does a disservice to readers and local policy makers alike. One wonders whether the editorial staff even bothered to consult entomologists before greenlighting this copy-paste climate narrative, which is nothing more than misinformation.
