Polydomy in the Slave‐Making Ant, Harpagoxenus Americanus (Emery)(Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Slavery in ants is a form of social parasitism in which parasitic "slave-making" species exploit the labor of workers derived from host-species colonies. The slave makers raid host-species nests, where they capture all or part of the brood. Subsequently, workers maturing from the captured brood form a social attachment to the slave makers and perform all the usual worker-ant functions in the parasites’ colony (see review in Buschinger et al. 1980). Harpagoxenus americanus (Emery) is an obligatory slave maker living in eastern North America, where it forms mixed colonies with members of certain Leptothorax species (see Alloway 1979). Two kinds of H. americanus nests are found: "primary nests" containing a single slave-maker queen and slaves with or without slave-maker workers, and "secondary nests" consisting of slave-maker workers and slaves without a slave-maker queen (Creighton 1927; Sturtevant 1927; Buschinger & Alloway 1977). Primary nests are apparently established when a parasite queen successfully invades a hostspecies nest (Wesson 1939), but the origin of secondary nests is questionable. The problem is compounded by the fact that secondary nests are usually more numerous than primary nests and frequently produce slave-maker females (workers and or quens) from