Aspartame-based Sweetener as a Strong Ant Poison: Falsifying an Urban Legend?

Abstract

Information about the usability of artificial sweeteners, mainly aspartame, for controlling pest ants has spread widely in the internet. With a laboratory experiment we tested the effect of an aspartame based sweetener on the mortality of the black garden ant Lasius niger, a common pest ant in kitchens in Europe. The aspartame-based sweetener was added to the laboratory jelly food of ants in the experimental group (16 colonies). The control group (14 colonies) received otherwise similar jelly but without the aspartame-based sweetener. During the 35 day period of experiment we did not find any signs of aspartame induced mortality in tested ants. In addition, 135 colony founding L. niger queens were submerged in a sweetener solution (artificial sweetener + distilled water) and 135 queens were submerged in distilled water (control). The overall mortality was very low (<1.5%) and no between-group differences in mortality were found within 24 and 96 hours. Our results strongly oppose the rumors that aspartame sweeteners are effective as an ant poison, at least with a typical dose of household aspartame products.

Naturally Occurring Compounds/Materials as Alternatives to Synthetic Chemical Insecticides for Use in Fire Ant Management

“…Transfer of erythritol among the fire ant colonies was also observed. Toxicity of aspartame was not observed on other ants, such as black garden ants, Lasius niger [27], indicating a possible species selectivity of its toxicity toward ants. The toxicity of erythritol was well documented for many other insect species, such as fruit fly [28], termites [29], house fly and stable fly [30,31], pear psylla [32].…”