ecause of our increasingly global economy, with more people and merchandise moving about more rapidly than ever before, new pests are constantly invading this country.  Often these invaders end up becoming some of our most serious pests---much more invasive and damaging than native pests.
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This is nowhere more evident than in the ant world.  Consider these ants that have arrived here from other parts of the world, mostly in the last century: Argentine ants, pharaoh ants, red imported fire ants, pavement ants, white-footed ants, crazy ants, and ghost ants.  All of these ants are gradually spreading and showing up where they've never been seen before.
An example of this is the white-footed ant, so named because the bottoms of its legs are whitish.  This ant is established and slowly spreading in Florida, but was also recently discovered thriving as far away as San Francisco and Seattle.
What makes these imported ants so "successful" at invading new territories?   Many of them have an incredible reproductive capacity because each colony has many queens.  Colonies can end up being very large, often with many cooperating nests, and some kinds can easily divide into two or more colonies, a process called "budding".
The cooperating nests of white-footed ants can total as many as several million ants, which means on colony can invade several homes simultaneously.  Incredibly, half of this ant's colony is made up of reproductive egg-laying females.  You can be sure we'll be hearing much more about "super ants" like these in the years ahead!