Ant Colony Life Cycle:
Colony Foundation with multiple Queens
A colony may be founded by two or more queens (pleometrosis), in general sisters, that may stay together for the whole colony life or else go away to found their own colonies some time after the found of the original colony. In many cases the queens start to fight with the result that one one queen remains.
More details may be found in these references.
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© American Museum of Natural History, January 3, 1998; Acknowledgments. This page was written by C.R.F. Brandão and D.Agosti, and maintained by Donat Agosti