Temnothorax minutissimus: a rare inquiline

Recently, while searching for the slave-makers T. duloticus and Protomognathus americanus, Gzesiek Buzchowski and I found a very few colonies of the rare workerless parasite Temnothorax minutissimus in one of the Metro Parks surrounding Columbus, Ohio. Upon returning from one of our collecting trips, we opened fully the ant-bearing acorns and hickories we've collected to find these inquilines. Under the microscope we saw that we had a multitude of queens from two species. By watching the behavior and getting a positive identification by Stefan Cover in the Department of Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, we discovered we had collected the inquiline, Temnothorax minutissimus. This relatively little known species is a parasite of T. curvispinosus that produces only reproductive females (queens) and every so often males. Apparently, only the dominant parasite queen lays eggs and typically is the individual 'riding' or flanking the sides of the host queen, licking her head. We collected two colonies, a small one containing about 14 T. minutissimus queens and 1 live host queen (there was an abdomen of another) and a large one with about 32 T. minutissimus queens. In the larger nest there are about 8 host queens, but not all of them are flanked by the parasite. Only one or two queens are harassed and usually by two T. minutissimus queens. We've dissected a few of the T. minutissimus to determine whether all are mated and if perhaps more than one is laying eggs. With our very small sample size, it seems that more than just one is mated, but it is yet unclear whether more than one individual is laying eggs.