One of my acorn ant colonies turned out to be a slave making colony. In the image above, there are two Temnothorax queens of different species. However, the one on the left is a Temnothorax americanus queen. Temnothorax americanus is a slave-making ant, meaning that they raid free-living colonies of a host species. They pillage brood from the target’s nest and take the brood home to turn into slaves.
If you look at the two queens, you will probably notice that the queen on the left, the parasite, has a larger head, a significantly smaller thorax, and a far smaller gaster than the non-parasitic queen on the right. This is because the slave maker invades a colony, takes over the brood, and lets the host queens starve to death. Then, the host pupae are allowed to eclose, becoming the parasite’s first workers.
In order to keep their colony going, the parasitic workers go off to other colonies of the host species and pillage the brood. Then they beeline back to their nest and enslave the brood. The workers that emerge from the pillaged brood then care for the parasite’s brood.
However, this terrible system sometimes backfires in a karmatic way. Once the parasitic workers become pupae, the slaves sometimes chemically detect something a little odd about the pupae they’re caring for. Then, the slaves rally and start tearing parasitic pupae to pieces! This will not result in the slaves returning to their original nest, but it certainly messes things up for the slavers, since now their colony has been severely weakened.
How did I know it was a slave making colony, well, here is a picture of a slaver and a slave.
In this image there are two workers of different species, but they are from the same colony. This is because one of them is a slave making ant, while the other is an enslaved ant. The enslaver is the one with the slightly larger head and gaster, which is on the left.
These two Temnothorax longispinosus workers are not in the same colony. The one on the left is part of a free-living colony, while the one on the right is enslaved to a Temnothorax americanus colony. The one on the right must’ve been one of those pupae that the T. americanus workers pillaged from a free-living colony.
