Auburn, Aug 6---Patience and persistence appear to be two of Henry Dorough’s virtues.

Four years ago, Dorough, a Talladega County Extension agent, became intrigued with efforts under way in Florida to introduce phorid flies as a natural predator of fire ants.

(Above: Talladega County Agent Henry Dorough is shown harvesting phorid flies from fire-ant mounds on a research plot located near Talladega.)

Dorough already had been active with a number of similar projects, such as introducing weevils to control the spread of troublesome musk thistles.

He believed the phorid flies, tiny, pinhead-sized fire ant predators from South America, would be just the thing to control fire ant populations in his own county and reduce the need for expensive insecticides.

Shortly after learning about the phorid flies, Dorough held a countywide meeting to discuss insect control issues. In attendance was Dr. Kathy Flanders, an Auburn University-based Extension entomologist, who had helped him with earlier insect control projects.

He used the opportunity to enlist Flanders’ support for a phorid fly project.

"Kathy knew Sanford Porter, the USDA researcher who was introducing the phorid flies in Florida," Dorough says. "So, in front of everybody, I got her to promise right then and there that she would get in touch with Porter to set up a similar program right here in Talladega County."

Flanders was true to her word. Several weeks later, she e-mailed Dorough pledging her – and Porter’s – full support for a Talledega County phorid fly project.

Working with Porter, Dorough closely followed the instructions that had been developed for introducing phorid flies into ant colonies.

This involved pouring a vial of fire ant heads containing phorid fly pupae into selected fields.

Like a scene out of the science-fiction thriller "Aliens," phorid flies reduce fire ant populations by preying on them. The first step of this grisly scenario takes place when an emerging fly maggot burrows its way into an ant’s head, feeding off the interior. Over time the head falls off, and a fly emerges.

The ghastly cycle of egg laying and decapitation then begins again.

In the past, the mere introduction of infected ant heads in selected mounds had been all that was required to establish the flies. It was the approach Porter had used to introduce the flies in Florida.

Yet, much to Dorough’s disappointment, it didn’t work in Talladega County.

After discussing the problem with Porter, Dorough was then instructed to rear the adult flies in his office before introducing them directly to the mounds.

Still, no luck.

This is where Dorough’s patience and dogged persistence finally paid off.

After discussing strategy with Porter over the next year, Dorough agreed to harvest a few live ants and send them to Florida, where Porter could parasitize them personally. There was also one other change of plans: Instead of using Pseudacteon tricuspis flies, the Phorid fly species that had been successfully introduced in Florida, Porter opted to use a smaller species, known as Pseudacteon curvatus.

The ants were then shipped back to Dorough, who reintroduced them to their respective mounds.

"It was really interesting to see the ants accepted after being gone for several days," Dorough recalls with a chuckle. "It was sort of like sending them off on a vacation."

Even so, despite all these efforts, it looked for a time that Dorough would come up empty-handed again. No sign of the flies turned up throughout the spring and most of the summer.

"I was discouraged because I thought, ‘Dad gummit! This is the second failure we’ve faced,’" he says. "I wanted the flies to succeed because I knew how valuable they would be in the future."

Finally, on August 14, plunging his shovel into one of the mounds, Dorough quickly realized he had hit pay dirt -- a fact confirmed several days later by Porter from samples Dorough collected from the mounds.

Even better, subsequent monitoring this past spring revealed the flies survived winter.

For now, Porter plans no more introductions of the flies into Talladega County. Instead, he and Dorough will spend the next few months monitoring the spread of the flies and observing how the ants react.

With the flies present throughout the daytime, the ants should have a harder time foraging for food.

Even so, the flies will not eliminate the ants entirely. However, Dorough believes they may play an instrumental role in reducing ant populations to about 30 percent of their current levels – levels, he believes, that will make the ants far easier to manage and possibly even lead to a reduced need for chemicals.