Maryland is home to over 100 species of ants, several of them red-orange or red-brown in color, so fortunately not all red ants are Red Imported Fire Ants, which are a particular species. The current resident range of fire ants does not include Maryland, and the odd occasion when they do show up (typically in potted plant soil from nursery stock shipped north), they are found and eradicated. Our winters are generally too cold still for colonies to survive for long, though climate change may allow them to persist here in the future.

Extension is not part of the MD Department of Agriculture, so suspected fire ants can be reported to their Plant Protection and Weed Management section.

That said, fire ants are small (less than a quarter-inch in length) and have a distinctive two-humped (two "nodes") pedicel, which is the "waist" body section between their thorax and abdomen. A sample diagram from Mississippi State University, with the nodes circled, is attached. The ant you pictured does not have two pedicel nodes. It might be one of our red carpenter ant species instead, such as the native Chestnut Carpenter Ant.

Miri