The second strategy is to fight and frequently hosts defend fiercely their brood and their nest in deadly battles. One is to watch for scout ants from the slavemaking species and kill them (search and destroy!) before they can inform to their mates that a possible host nest is available. On their hand, nests under the risk of an attack have different strategies to avoid it or to survive. Slave raids are preceded by a scouting event during which a single slave-maker worker discovers and inspects a host nest and returns to its colony to recruit nest mates and prepare the raid. Slave-maker ant Polyergus lucidus with host Formica archboldi

longispinosus and T curvispinosus at the same time. For example, the slave-maker P americanus can have slaves of T. There are sometimes slave-maker nests with two species of slaves. Most slave-raiders capture only brood, but a few species also enslave adult workers. The behavior is unusual among ants but has evolved several times independently. The slave-makers may either be permanent social parasites (thus depending on enslaved ants throughout their whole lives) or facultative slave-makers, that use slaves as a temporal advantage. After emerging in the slave-maker nest, slave workers work as if they were in their own colony, assuming most tasks in their new nest while parasite workers only concentrate on replenishing the labor force from neighboring host nests. As a consequence, few colonies survive a slave-maker raid. Slave-making ants capture brood from other ant species to increase the worker force of their colony through regular, destructive raids that frequently finish with the killing of many workers and the queen of the attacked nest. The strategy appears among fishes, birds and insects, including some species of ants. Illustration of a slave-making ant, from “Chapters on Ants” by Mary Treat, New York (1879)īrood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young.

Slave maker 3 can i keep minor slaves