Head to head
Pharaoh Ant vs Fire Ant
Pharaoh Ant
VS Fire Ant
The pharaoh ant and fire ant are two small, many-queened ants that have spread around the world as pests, one inside heated buildings and the other across warm outdoor land.
| Pharaoh Ant | Fire Ant | |
|---|---|---|
| Scientific name | Monomorium pharaonis | Solenopsis invicta |
| Size and colour | Tiny, yellow to reddish-brown, only a couple of millimetres long, with a darker tip to the abdomen | Workers 2 to 6 mm long, reddish-brown with a darker abdomen |
| Colony | Many queens, with groups of workers and queens leaving to start new nests by budding | A mound colony can contain over 200,000 workers and multiple queens in the polygyne form |
| Where it nests | Heated buildings such as hospitals, flats, and bakeries, in cooler climates | Mounds in open ground, including grassland and farmland |
| Sting and pest status | A hospital pest because it can carry disease-causing bacteria, and hard to control because spraying scatters the colony | Swarms up when a mound is disturbed and stings repeatedly with a venom of piperidine alkaloids, leaving a white pus-filled blister, and causes billions of dollars of damage |
| Special trick | Marks trails with an attractive signal and uses a repellent signal to mark dead-ends and abandoned routes | In a flood, thousands of workers link legs and jaws into a buoyant raft that carries the queen and brood for days or weeks |
| Origin and range | Heated buildings worldwide, and outdoors in tropical regions | Native to central South America, and introduced to the southern United States, Australia, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Caribbean |
| Conservation status | Not Evaluated | Not Evaluated |
Pharaoh Ant vs Fire Ant: common questions
Which ant forms living rafts?
The fire ant, whose workers link legs and jaws in a flood to form a buoyant raft that carries the queen and brood.
Why is the pharaoh ant hard to control?
Spraying with insecticide can scatter a colony into many new nests, and its many queens let colonies split and spread.
Where did the fire ant come from?
It is native to central South America and was accidentally introduced to the port of Mobile, Alabama, in the early twentieth century.