-Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal" Kingdom" for more than 40 years.

♪♪ -So, if you spend a lot of time outdoors in the Lowcountry, you probably notice there's a new lizard in town, and this one is called a brown anole.

There, I got him.

And brown anoles are not from here.

This is a species that's native to Cuba and the Bahamas, but it's really started to show up here.

In fact, certain species like this one have a real knack for ending up in areas far from their origin.

In this episode, we're going to take a look at some of the exotic species that have moved right here into the Lowcountry.

♪♪ So, look at that little guy.

Okay, we got something big on.

There we go.

We've got the bird, and there's already a chick in there.

♪♪ ♪♪ So, this is a brown anole.

Now, how do I know this isn't a green anole?

Because, remember, green anoles can turn brown.

Well, a couple things I noticed.

One is this has a short, little head.

Green anoles have kind of a long nose and a long head.

Also, this would never turn green.

So if you see a green one around here, it's a green anole.

Also, these typically have a pattern on the back which you can kind of see a little bit.

And they have the ability to lighten and darken.

This one's in a very light phase right now.

And then the big thing is on males is this dewlap right here, this wonderful dewlap, which is pink on a green anole.

But on this brown anole, it's much, much darker red, almost a blood red color.

And there's some other factors, too.

It's just a shorter, chunkier animal with a very tall tail in comparison.

Now, brown anoles did not start here.

So, this is a species that's moved up from Florida, and it originally came from the Caribbean, probably from Cuba and other areas in the Bahamas and so forth.

And it has gotten here a variety of ways.

It probably has been a stowaway.

It's, you know, ended up in cargo on ships, things like that, and made its way to Florida.

And now it's just moving its way up, uh, throughout much of the southeast now.

Now, brown anoles are not dangerous to us at all.

They may out-compete green anoles a little bit, and that's one of the concerns.

They're a little bit more terrestrial as opposed to the green anole that's arboreal, which means it's going to spend a lot of time up in trees.

And these tend to be, I think, a little bit more aggressive.

And you can see they kind of have feisty dispositions.

But, you know, we really don't know exactly what kind of effect they're going to have on other animals in the area, because they really haven't been in South Carolina, in the Lowcountry, for very long.

But I'll tell you what.

So, you've seen a brown anole.

Let's look around a little bit and see if we can find a green anole.

So, there's one on this bluebird box.

I see them on bluebird boxes a lot.

In fact, sometimes they'll even spend a cool day in the winter inside a bluebird box.

But this is a big green anole.

Looks like a male.

And it's kind of cool today, so it looks like it's just starting to warm up.

One of the things I've noticed about these lizards is you can actually get pretty close to them.

As long as you don't touch them, they don't have a tendency to run away.

Now, once you touch them, they get much more skittish.

But this one is not real, real green yet.

I have a feeling it was much cooler earlier, and it's just starting to get warmed up in the sun.

So, these animals change color, and they do it probably less to match background and more because of mood and temperature.

And typically when they're warmer, they're greener.

And when they're cooler, they're kind of a dark brown color.

So I think this one's kind of -- Looks like kind of in between.

But what a remarkable animal.

I love the way they kind of look back at you over their shoulder.

They've got great eyes on turrets so that they can move just the eye without moving the whole head, long tail, and great feet for climbing.

So, they have good claws and the ability to climb up and stick to pretty smooth surfaces.

But this is our native green anole.

There's lots of anole species in the tropics especially.

But this is one that's so common in the United States, in the southeastern United States.

Wonderful animal.

And, again, the ability to turn -- be brown or to turn just vivid, bright green.

So, one of the other interesting things about these green anoles, as opposed to the brown anoles, is these are really arboreal.

So they're going to spend a lot of their time up in the canopy in the trees.

And brown anoles tend to be down close to the ground.

In fact, you see them on the ground quite a bit.

The only time you see these on the ground is if they're scampering between trees or bushes or something like that.

All these lizards are really, really beneficial.

And, you know, they eat all kinds of insects.

They eat, you know, things like grasshoppers and caterpillars and things like that.

And that's definitely beneficial.

And plus, it's just really cool having beautiful lizards like this around.

So, I've been seeing a frog lately, and I'm hoping we can kind of turn one up.

And I've been seeing lots of these, but they're little guys.

There's one right -- They're really -- There we go.

Here he is.

Boy, that's a cute little frog.

Let's see if I can get a better grip on this.

So, this is a frog that hasn't always been here.

This is an introduced species called a greenhouse frog, Eleutherodactylus planirostris.

And I'll tell you what's cool about these frogs.

Well, one, they're really hardy and really adaptable.

And so that's one of the reasons why they do well here.

So, these probably came in with potted plants and in soil and stuff like that from Cuba and the Bahamas and probably other parts of the Caribbean.

But they probably have only been in South Carolina for a few years, although they've been in Florida for a long, long time.

But what's interesting is they don't really have a tadpole phase.

So, most frogs lay eggs in the water, the eggs hatch into tadpoles, and the tadpoles metamorphose into frogs.

These guys lay eggs in moist soil, in a moist log, and then the eggs hatch into little froglets, and then they grow up to adult size.

And by the way, this is adult size.

This is not a big frog.

Now, even though this is an introduced species, it probably has very little ecological significance.

I mean, some animals probably eat them.

They would, of course, eat insects and small invertebrates, but probably, it's not a big, big problem.

But still, you got to be careful with invasive species, because they can have bad effects on the environment.

So, obviously, kind of the cat's out of the bag.

There are lots of these little frogs around, so I don't think it really makes a big difference if we release this one.

So I'm going to just put him down, and off he goes.

♪♪ ♪♪ Let's see here.

♪♪ Oh, here we go.

I thought we might see this.

So, this is a wetland that just flooded a couple days ago.

And it was dry before some heavy rains that we had.

And look right here.

So, these are fire ants.

And, man, there are thousands of them.

And this is a raft of floating ants.

So what they've done is all kind of grabbed ahold of each other, and then they're just literally floating on the surface.

Now, it looks like some of them have climbed up some of this vegetation sticking out.

But what's interesting is I see some winged adults on top, and presumably those are ones that could kind of fly off and form a new colony.

Okay, so this one is attached to some vertical structure, but sometimes these are just floating free on the surface.

And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that some of the soldier ants will actually paddle off the front of the raft, and that moves it from place to place until it comes to something to attach to.

I mean, how amazing is that?

In fact, here's a little section that's broken off.

So I just want to try something just for the heck of it.

Look at that.

Now, I can't do this for very long, because, in fact, ouch, ouch, ouch.

[ Laughs ] Okay, I think I'll -- Gah, that's amazing how much they stick together.

It's almost like they're glued together.

And how buoyant they are.

I mean, this thing really doesn't want to sink.

Uh-oh.

They're coming up the -- Looks like they're coming up the thing.

I don't know if I can shake these off.

I remember I was trapping a wetland one time.

I set some minnow traps, and I inadvertently backed into one of these floating mats, and I had hundreds of ants on me.

And, of course, I spent a lot of time kind of knocking them off of me.

But it can actually be dangerous, I guess, in flooding conditions and stuff like that.

Now, we have lots of native ant species, but this is an invasive species.

This is one that's introduced.

Probably came out of South America and came in through the Gulf, maybe Mobile, Alabama, or something like that.

But, you know, this isn't how we're used to seeing fire ants.

Let's go check some out on land.

I think I saw some fire ants right on the side of the road here.

And, yeah, right at the base of this tree.

Boy, the first thing I noticed is look at the woodpecker damage.

That's probably from a pileated.

And you can see where they've been looking for beetle grubs and things like that.

Boy, they just hammer away at the tree and really get in deep into the trunk of a dead tree to find all kinds of insects.

But down here is what I came over to see.

So, here is a typical fire ant mound.

You notice it's in the sun, and that's on purpose.

So, it's winter.

It's pretty cool today, but obviously this is getting really warm.

In fact, there's quite a bit of activity up on top.

Not much here, but up on top.

So, fire ant mounds can go, you know, several feet deep.

What you see on the surface is only part of it.

And so what I want to do is excavate this -- this nest just a little bit and be careful how I do this.

Gah, this one's kind of hard.

But usually what happens is you kind of make a hole in it, and they really start to boil out.

Yeah, and here they come.

You know, they have pheromonal signals.

So basically they're telling other ants that something has breached the mound, and out come the soldiers to protect it.

Now, obviously, fire ants can give you a pretty good sting, and they can actually bite and sting.

And some people are really allergic.

I got bit by some last week, and it just forms a red welt on me.

But sometimes you get kind of a pimple-like blister, and it can really hurt.

And if you get bit and stung multiple times, it can actually be dangerous.

And fire ants are really rough on certain species.

In fact, there are some species whose numbers have declined quite a bit possibly because of fire ants.

They can be treated with various chemicals and stuff, but obviously you don't want to pump a bunch of chemicals in the environment.

So if you do use any kind of treatment on fire ants, you want to be to be really careful with it and only use just as much as you need.

And, you know, you don't want to think, "Well, if this much will kill them, 10 times this much will kill them faster or better," or anything like that.

Only use pesticides in the amounts that are recommended.

So, it's important to realize that a lot of ant species are beneficial.

So, fire ants can be really damaging to the environment, but there are a lot of species that aren't, so you don't want to just go around killing ants.

There's no point in that at all.

So, fire ants are -- They're not going anywhere.

They're part of life here, and we just got to learn how to deal with them.

♪♪ Hey, guys, we have a great opportunity today.

We're here with Brad Cavin, and he's with Clemson University.

And we're going to talk about yellow-legged hornets.

-Yes, sir.

We're fixing to remove a yellow-legged hornet nest found here in Beaufort County.

-So, what's going on behind us?

So, they're putting a lift up.

-Yes, sir.

So right now, our tree company that we use, they are doing a test run to test the lift and test the equipment to make sure that the exterminators can get up safely and conduct the operation and kill the hornets and extract the hornets safely.

-So, Brad, you're with Clemson University, but who is the organization that you work with specifically?

-So, Clemson University.

I'm with Regulatory Services, and my department's specifically the Department of Plant Industry, and we enforce all the agriculture laws and regulations here in the state.

And the yellow-legged hornet is a new pest detection here in the US.

And I personally oversee the honeybee inspection program for the state.

And the yellow-legged hornet is a major pest problem for honeybees and beekeeping.

-Yeah, so you guys are really concerned about this one, aren't you?

-Yes, sir.

-This species.

-Yes, sir.

-So what is the harm to honeybees?

I mean, do they feed on them, or what's going on?

-So, yes, sir.

There's some behavior that the hornet does where they identify a location of a honeybee colony, and then they -- The term is called bee hawking.

And they will wait for honeybees to come back from foraging, and they will pick the honeybee off in flight and then fly off and find a location on a leaf or on a branch, and I call the process butchering the honeybee.

And they basically clean the honeybee up and take it back to their nest and feed it to younger hornets.

-So, and I sort of heard a little bit about some of this, but how did you find this nest that we're looking at today?

-So right now, we have hundreds of traps placed throughout Beaufort and Jasper County, and we're checking traps weekly.

And they might be in a neighborhood or on the side of a road, but we look at the trapping data and use that as a compass or a guide to help guide us in the direction of the nest.

And so once we're confident that we're heading in the right direction, we have teams that go out and scope and glass tree lines and look for hornets flying and identify the hornet flight path and figure out where they're going hunting and where home is.

-So, I've helped a little bit out on Spring Island to look for these things.

And, boy, the nests are hard to find.

They're really cryptic.

They really blend in.

-So, we spoke about trapping and how we have traps scattered out throughout Beaufort and Jasper County.

-So then once you catch individuals, how do you find the nest?

-So if a beekeeper notifies us that they have honeybees and they have that hawking behavior, we can go out, locate the beehives, go capture the hornet while it's doing the hawking, and then do releases.

And so that's another technique that helps lead us back to the direction of the nest, where we just identify the flight path of the hornet and try to pinpoint the nest location.

-And that seems really tough, too.

So you're actually just letting the animals go and then just getting a compass heading of where they're going?

-Yes, sir.

-And then trying to extrapolate where the nest is from that.

-Yes, sir.

So using the binoculars, they're like little black darts, black bullets crossing the tree lines.

And it takes some skill and time to develop the eye to pinpoint what the hornets look like, but those are the techniques that we've been able to use to locate nests.

-So in this nest, how many individuals could there be in there?

-So, it's really unknown exactly how many individuals.

But over the course of the lifetime of the season of the nest, literature says that they can have up to 6,000 hornets.

So this particular nest, if it was later in the fall or early winter, you may have 1,500 to 2,000 hornets in this particular nest.

-Do you have an idea how far they'll fly to get prey, to get honeybees?

-In an environment like this, if they've keyed in on where honeybees are, they don't have to fly far.

-Okay.

-Generally speaking, it's less than two miles.

-So they're going to try and build a nest close to where the food source is.

-Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

-And so you mentioned earlier that they will sometimes feed on, like, dead animals and carcasses and stuff, as well.

-Correct.

-So that's, instead of collecting, you know, sweet stuff like you use to trap, this is different.

They're collecting protein?

-Correct.

So, our traps are grape juice and brown sugar.

And it's a carbohydrate sugar source where they -- It appears they use that to build up the nest and just have energy and strength.

And sometime this time of the year, the nest switches over to more of a protein-based diet.

And that's to finish raising up the young to the queen so that they can overwinter.

A few things I'd like to mention about the life cycle -- The queens will emerge, and they'll mate and overwinter somewhere.

And then in the spring, they're going to come out of overwintering and look for a location to build the first stage, which is called an embryo nest.

These nests are going to be underneath a roof line of a structure, something that's protected from the environment.

And then somewhere several months down the road, the hornet and queen leave that nest and go establish the second stage, which is called a primary nest.

This could be underneath a underneath a roof line of a structure, but it also could be in a tree.

That nest will grow to be about the size of a basketball.

And then sometime in June or July, they go to the third stage, which is called a secondary nest.

-And how big do those get?

-They can be anywhere between the size of a basketball or if not found and left unattended and left un-removed, they could become the size of a small car engine.

The nest that we're removing today is an average sized, beach ball sized nest.

♪♪ -So, Brad, what is the source of these animals?

How did they get here?

Where did they come from?

-The native range is in China.

And so Regulatory Services and more specifically the Department of Plant Industry, whom I work for, we look and try to locate all different types of invasive species, whether it's an insect, a weed, or a disease.

-Oh, so it's plants and animals.

-Yes, sir.

And there's a lot of challenges when you're trying to locate an invasive species and removing it.

But we do the best we can with the circumstances that we have.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Can you kind of explain the process of what we're going to do today, this evening?

-They're going to go up on the lift.

There's different techniques on how we remove nests.

This particular nest, we're going to bag it and then fumigate it, or dust it in the bag and then cut the nest off the tree, and the hornets and the nest is removed from the environment.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -So, Brad, it looks like they just got down.

Can we look in the nest and take a look at it?

-Yeah, we're going to go check it out and look at some hornets and look at the nest.

-So, Brad, let's see what's in here.

-Yeah.

So this is the nest that we just pulled out of the tree.

We're going to cut it open.

♪♪ Do be ready to run.

-Gah, that is -- Yeah, be ready to run if stuff starts coming out.

You know, it looks a little bit like a bald-faced hornet nest, but it's just a beautiful color.

It's a lot lighter.

-Yeah, so, they're tan.

They're brown.

You know, these nests are constructed from wood fiber, plant fiber.

You know, they're a little bit more sturdier than a bald-faced hornet nest.

You know, that nest is more papery, where this is more like cardboard.

They're still fragile, as you can see.

-[ Laughs ] A little heavy handed.

-But this nest is a little bit smaller than what I was originally describing when we were talking earlier.

But, you know, it's the size of a basketball, a little bit bigger than a basketball.

But this is what we're trying to get out of South Carolina, one nest at a time.

So that was probably the entrance that we saw.

I don't see one.

So most likely, that's the entrance of the nest.

And they construct it around the branch of the tree.

-You see any individuals in there?

-So, there are some.

-So, is this typical size, or is that -- -Yes, sir.

So, this is a female.

It's a worker.

She's a worker.

You can see the pattern with the coloring on the abdomen.

You can see the yellow legs.

That's what the yellow-legged hornet looks like.

-That's where the name comes from.

-The yellow legs.

-So, Brad, how dangerous are these guys?

-So, it's important.

These aren't any more dangerous than any other stinging insect -- for example, the bald-faced hornet or honeybee or yellow jacket.

They're all stinging insects.

So they hurt, but -- -Yeah, they do hurt.

-The yellow-legged hornet, it doesn't pose any more danger to humans than any of these other stinging insects.

The danger it poses is to honeybees and pollinators.

-Yeah.

So, Brad, another nest down, huh?

-Yes, sir.

-Don't you have another one possibly to do tonight?

-Yeah, the crew that we had out removing the nest, they've already left, and they're on the way to go pull down another nest.

-Well, I'll tell you what.

I appreciate what you guys are doing, but is there something that just the regular person can do to help you guys out?

-Absolutely.

If you see a yellow-legged hornet, report it.

If you see a nest, report it.

I wouldn't recommend just going out and removing these on your own, because the larger the nests are, the more hornets there are.

But it's important to report them.

-Yeah, well, we sure appreciate what you guys are doing.

And thank you so much for letting us come out and help you out today.

-Thank you.

Yes, sir.

♪♪ -So, we've talked about a lot of invasive animals, but we haven't even touched on plants, and there are some plants that are a real problem.

In fact, if you look right here, this is Japanese climbing fern.

And this is really, really an invasive species.

So, in fact, there's some right here.

There's some -- Oh, my gosh.

It's -- I mean, it is everywhere.

It's all around the ground here.

You can see it climbing up really high up here.

So, just -- I mean, it is literally taking over.

And that's the problem with Japanese climbing fern.

First of all, it's really good at spreading.

It can do that by spores, like ferns, but it also can send out rhizomes.

And those two combinations allow it to spread out really quickly.

And again, not only can it climb up something, it can envelop something like a shrub or a bush and push it to the ground just with the weight and completely kill it.

Now, the real problem with that is a lot of our native plant species are important for wildlife and everything else.

And so if they're taken over by Japanese climbing fern, then that's a real problem for sure.

In fact, there are cases where this stuff goes into a -- gets into a pine forest and will go 90 feet up a pine tree and in some cases can have -- do irreparable damage to timber.

So, controlling Japanese climbing fern is really difficult.

You'd think fire might take it out, but that doesn't seem to be particularly effective.

Certain mixtures of herbicides seem to work well, but you pretty much have to get an early start on it, because once it gets really established, it's especially hard to control.

So obviously, a lot of invasive species have moved into the Lowcountry, and some of these species are very likely here to stay.

But there are still some things we can do.

We can do ecological research.

We can do surveys and assessments.

And we can also look into the best way to control and, in some cases, eradicate some of these species.

But one thing's for sure.

It's not going to be easy.

Thanks for joining us on "Coastal Kingdom."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Funding for "Coastal Kingdom" is provided by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, which proudly supports this program.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has funded educational and entertaining programming like "Coastal" Kingdom" for more than 40 years.