The Inquiline Ant Myrmica karavajevi Uses Both Chemical and Vibroacoustic Deception Mechanisms to Integrate into Its Host Colonies.

ABSTRACT: Social parasitism represents a particular type of agonistic interaction in which a parasite exploits an entire society instead of a single organism. One fascinating form of social parasitism in ants is the "inquilinism", in which a typically worker-less parasitic queen coexists with the resident queen in the host colony and produces sexual offspring. To bypass the recognition system of host colonies, inquilines have evolved a repertoire of deceiving strategies. We tested the level of integration of the inquiline Myrmica karavajevi within the host colonies of M. scabrinodis and we investigated the mechanisms of chemical and vibroacoustic deception used by the parasite. M. karavajevi is integrated into the ant colony to such an extent that, in rescue experiments, the parasite pupae were save

SUBMITTER: Casacci LP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8301377 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature