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Parasitic

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:42 pm
by ServampANT
What's a non-parasitic and parasitic ant?
I have no clue :P

Re: Parasitic

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:09 pm
by Batspiderfish
There are fully-claustral ants, which have queens that seal themselves underground and start a colony with their stores of nutrition.

There are semi-claustral queens, which forage during the founding stages.

Then, there are numerous social parasite queens, most of which have evolved to exploit queenless colonies of other species (or evolved to dispose of a host queen, themselves) and use the workforce to raise their own worker and/or reproductive castes. Some social parasites don't have workers at all, and some social parasites can coexist with fully-functional host colonies. Social parasites have lost the ability to found colonies themselves.