Chemical blueprints to identifying fire ants: overview on venom alkaloids

Solenopsis fire ants are remarkably difficult to identify using morphological characters, particularly from the most abundant minor workers. The present manuscript introduces a set of chemical tools to facilitate species diagnosis from field-collected fire ant samples, herein focusing on minor workers. Fire ants from different localities (native and invaded) were analysed using gas-chromatography. Samples were collected from the field into organic solvents; sampling effort included 14 species, and a suspected hybrid. A total of 32 piperidine alkaloids were spotted and tentatively identified and representative relative chemical proportions for minor workers are presented for the first time for a number of species. It is hoped that the provided info will prove useful to researchers working on fire ants in future studies. Further compounds are being analysed for additional auxiliary tools.