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Highly social ants, bees and wasps employ sophisticated recognition systems to identify colony members and deny foreign individuals access to their nest. For ants, cuticular hydrocarbons serve as the labels used to ascertain nest membership. Social parasites, however, are capable of breaking the recognition code so that they can thrive unopposed within the colonies of their hosts. Here we examine the influence of the socially parasitic slave-making ant,  Polyergus breviceps  on the nestmate recognition system of its slaves,  Formica altipetens . We compared the chemical, genetic, and behavioral characteristics of colonies of enslaved and free-living  F .  altipetens . We found that enslaved  Formica  colonies were more genetically and chemically diverse than their free-living counterparts. These differences are likely caused by the hallmark of slave-making ant ecology: seasonal raids in which pupa are stolen from several adjacent host colonies. The different social environments of enslaved and free-living  Formica  appear to affect their recognition behaviors: enslaved  Formica  workers were less aggressive towards non-nestmates than were free-living  Formica . Our findings indicate that parasitism by  P .  breviceps  dramatically alters both the chemical and genetic context in which their kidnapped hosts develop, leading to changes in how they recognize nestmates.

The Effect of Social Parasitism by Polyergus breviceps on the Nestmate Recognition System of Its Host, Formica altipetens