The red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), is an invasive species causing tremendous economic and ecological impacts in its introduced areas. Bating has been used as the major control strategy against the fire ant. The effective baiting requires ant workers to actively transport the baits back to their colony till the ants consume a lethal dosage of baits. However, recent findings showed that viral infection, despite being asymptomatic, leads to reduced foraging activity in fire ant colonies, raising a concern that baiting may not be effective against virus-infected fire ants due to insufficient intake of baits. Continuous baiting therefore could select for more virus-infected fire ant colonies in the field, leading to more colonies not responding to baiting. To investigate the fire ant-virus-baiting tripartite interaction, the proposed work will conduct two field experiments, including 1) the recruitment patterns to bait products by field fire ant colonies with varying SINV prevalence and 2) the effects of different SINV field prevalence levels on bait efficacy. These results would allow a better understating of the fundamental role of virus but also provide important implications for improving current fire ant bating strategies.