Ant Colony Life Cycle:

Social Parastic Colony Foundation

A single queen can intrude into a colony of another species, kill the host queen, and then use the host workers to rear her own brood.

In the picture above, a queen of the social parasitic genus Polyergus is killing the queen of Formica sp., the host species commonly used (Christine Johnson, personal communication). Polyergus are technically spoken slave makers.

More details may be found in these references.

alternatives

previous

next