Negative impacts:

* They creat competition for food by eating the seeds that the native animals eat also by eating the eggs of ground laying birds they decrease the bird population

* Crops are negatively affected in that when the ants build their nest they destroy the crop's root system

* Another negative effect of the fire ant is it's aggressiveness it will attack anything that disturbs it's nest. If a small child were to disturb the nest hundreds if not thousands of ants would swarm that child and began biting and stinging the child until it left the area and got them off.

Positive Impacts:

* The fire ant feeds on flees ticks and other parasites that affect crops and animals.

* Abandoned Fire Ant mounds aerate the soil causing for water and nutrients to penetrate the earth easier causing for more nourishment for crops.

* Help to spread seeds from place to place. Scouting fire ants take what they find to the nest and deposit it in food chambers often times the ants scavenge more than they can eat and when the ants leave they don't take the seeds with them allowing them to germinate in the now fertile aerated soil that has been enriched by the ants wastes and decayed food.

Positive and Negative Impacts