Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave species (F.
But as ants, which are not slave-makers, will, as I have seen, carry off pupae of other species, if scattered near their nests, it is possible that pupae originally stored as food might become developed; and the ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could.
The
slave-maker style of life imposes selection pressures to both parts, as frequent slave raids strongly affect host populations and on the other hand, invading a host nest by parasite queens is determinant for their survival (see [2,5,6]).
For example, ants and bees were invariably described as stealthy invader, reserve labourer, Queen, slave, soldier, farmer, and nurse, and were ascribed behaviours such as "effective policing" or "corrupt motives." The hierarchical social institutions and roles used to describe social insects created a "legitimating loop between social and natural systems [which] co-created class, race, and gender hierarchies." The book's middle chapters emphasize how dominant discourses of the colonial era, when so much early work in entomology and sociology became entwined, were reflected in the racialized terms ascribed to insect behaviour and roles, as, for instance, slave and
slave-maker ants, alongside notions of caste and gender.
The presence of fertile,
slave-maker workers does not appear to reduce colony productivity in H.
Still, other species are
slave-makers raiding the nests of other ants and bearing away the larvae to rear and use as slave workers in their own nests.
These youngsters grow up inside the acorn home of the
slave-makers' queen, doing her housework and nursemaiding her young.
The "chief family" of slave-making ants (owners) is called "The Shining" because their bodies "shine with a gloss like varnish." A well-orchestrated slave ant society is comprised of several central roles: the
slave-makers, the masters, and the slaves themselves.
Soldiers are obligatory
slave-makers of various ant species in the genus Formica, which assume all worker activities after they are captured as pupae in slaving raids.
The slaves are captured young, as pupae, and they emerge as adults in the
slave-makers' nest.