Project Number: 6402-22320-003-15
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 20, 2007
End Date: Sep 19, 2009

Objective:
The objectives of this project are to (1) provide new information on landscape metrics and habitat characteristics that favor high imported fire ant populations in the field, and (2) use the new information to develop risk assessment models for predicting fire ant population densities.

Approach:
Landscape metrics, habitat characteristics, and imported fire ant population density will be measured at fine spatial scale across a livestock and forage research farm to determine the factors influencing fire ant abundance. Significant factors will be incorporated into a predictive model which will be applied over a separate, similar landscape to assess the robustness of the model across different areas. The result will be new information useful for predicting fire ant populations based on their landscape ecology.