The agency said the pesticide chlorpyrifos, sold commercially as Dursban and Lorsban, is too great a risk to children to be used around the home. It has been a staple in termite protection for decades. UH Entomology Professor J. Kenneth Grace, involved in the ant research for the past several years, warned that it is a mistake to think of these things in terms of magic bullets. Such developments re-emphasize the often hidden values of diversity in the natural world, Grace said. At first, he and his colleagues were looking for an ant that might attack termites and wipe out colonies.
Ants are the greatest enemies of termites and can sort of ' exclude' termites in some situations.
Most ants give off chemicals, or venom, which termites can detect from afar, and termites mount a defense immediately, sending soldier termites with their huge jaws to the front lines and worker termites back to build a barrier to keep the ants away, he said. If some ants' venom was a warning to the termites, Grace and post-graduate researcher Mary Cornelius reasoned, perhaps it could be turned against the termites as a repellent. We became interested in the venom chemical in the house ant, a black ant called Ochotellus glaber, or the Glaber ant. Five years ago, Grace and Cornelius isolated from the Glaber ant a chemical compound called dolichodial. We found this compound actually had some longevity - it lasted for at least a month when we treated sand with it.