Invasive termites become growing threat to Florida. What to know as swarm season approaches.(South Florida Sun Sentinel)

This should be of particular interest to greedy-gus Florida "developers," a small group of willful men like Senator-developer TRAVIS JAMES HUTSON, UF Board of Trustees Chair MORI HOSSEINI, and Florida Constitution Revision Commission Chair CARLOS BERUFF, avaricious Dull Republicans, whose fortunes are built on stick-built tract homes. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. From South Florida Sentinel: 

Invasive termites become growing threat to Florida. What to know as swarm season approaches.

Darker and larger queen and king invasive subterranean termites surrounded by pale worker termites and soldier termites with pinchers. These invasive termites are more destructive than the drywood termites that require tenting. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)

By BILL KEARNEY | South Florida Sun Sentinel

PUBLISHED: February 26, 2024 at 6:35 a.m. | UPDATED: February 26, 2024 at 11:44 p.m.

At first the 15-foot by 4-foot plexiglass case looks like a massive piece of art — an abstract of a river delta or the veins of a leaf. But then you see tiny pale things scuttling, moving their way like white blood cells along every vein.

They’re termites, “2.5 million of them,” said Thomas Chouvenc with pride as he sits above what he calls an “arena.” He’s an urban entomologist at the University of Florida’s research center in Davie, and these are his babies. His lab houses some 25 million termites of various species in a quest to figure out how to stop them.

“Termite swarm season is almost upon us,” he says. “Things are about to get very busy.”

Around South Florida you’ll soon see clouds of termites bobbing around street and porch lights. And you’ll certainly see the ensuing tenting operations, as property owners fumigate.

But Chouvenc warns that those tents only deal with the tamest of the three destructive termite species in Florida, the West Indian drywood termite.

In fact, the other two species are invasive, and can spread much faster and are much more destructive. They’ve been here since the 1990s, and are spreading, affecting more and more neighborhoods around South Florida and moving north. And it’s not just homes that are under threat. The cherished tree canopies of Fort Lauderdale also are being eaten away.