Abstract

The Little Fire Ant, Wasmannia auropunctata, is ranked among the World’s 100 worst invasive species. Since the early 90’s, it is officially established in French Polynesia. The Polynesian government actively fights it since 2005, partially through the mapping of the known colonies. By this process, we discovered that the contaminated areas are also sheltering endemic hearths of Florida keratopathy. We studied 24 cases of keratopathy within the mega-colony settled in the Mahina commune’s highs (Tahiti). After control cases search, we pointed that the threatened animals are those living in contact with the ants (К² >12 within studied Pets cases). Apart from this predisposing factor, we did not found any other characteristic facilitating this pathology outbreak. We highlighted: 1) symptoms of acute attack such as blepharospasm and whimpering; 2) Topography of injuries shows that the eye median area is the most affected (p<0,05); 3) The most probable etiologic agent of this pathology is Wasmannia auropunctata.