I don’t know how big a “problem”(issue might be a better word) they are in the rest of the country/world, I can only say that in central Florida it’s dangerous to stand in one place for more then 8 seconds.
The only ones I’m having trouble with are the less obvious sugar ants; you can’t see their nests until it’s too late. Stand on the wrong log for a second to rest and you’re going to be yanking them out of your socks for the next half hour. Watch a bird on a flooded bank and that patch of dirt that was clear a second ago is suddenly covered in little moving dots scuttling up your foot… Trees too, there are lines of them going up the majority of the oaks and less commonly some of the other species.
Is this a Florida issue or does anyone have some advise? You can’t ignore them like the bigger ants because there’s just hundreds of the things in any nest(thousands in the bigger ones). All you can do is double check the ground every single time you stop, and even then you are going to miss them sometimes.
I was wondering what the natives did, but Google failed me on that search. 
Is there anything to do other than get used to the bites?
How do you live with the ant species in your area?
