last updated 20.Jan.2006

Slave-raiding is a specialized type of social parasitism, and it has evolved several times in different groups of ants.  These insects periodically raid other ant nests and take the pilfered brood back to their own nest.  Once the stolen brood matures, these captured ants imprint on their captors' colony and perform their usual labor of foraging, brood care, and nest maintenance as they would for their own colonies.  A number of species, such as those in the Holarctic genus Polyergus, are obligate parasites that cannot survive without the labor of their ants they enslave.  Others, such as several of the species in the Formica sanguinea species group, take "slaves" more opportunistically.