Talk:Ravoux's slavemaker ant

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Cite sources. This seems to unrealistic, if she smelled like a dead ant she would not be taken back to the nest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.30.10 (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the last editor, this seems incredible. I'd love to see a source.Datacharge (talk) 06:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

AGREED

The source cited specifically states the following: Slave-making ants are social parasites that capture brood of other ant species to increase the worker force of their colony. After emerging in the slave-maker nest, slave workers work as if they were in their own colony.

Basically the capture other ant pupae and then impregnate that pupae with the slavemaker ant phermones when the ants mature they are then loyal to the slavemaker hive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.74.24.2 (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

References

The top reference says that the slavemaker ants capture young ants from other species colonies before they have become accustomed to their owns colonies scent. The young are then taken to the slavemakers colony where they become accustomed to the slavemakers scent and serve that colony.

Thats an entirely different thing to the process in the article where a slavemaker queen fools her way into another species colony and kills their queen before taking over on mass.

Clarification anyone?

CaptinJohn (talk) 16:09, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The first source does mention this behaviour, though it does not go into much depth. "For some slave-making species, host colony take-over by slave-maker queens requires acceptance by adult host workers that have had no previous exposure to slave-makers. The founding queen of many slave-making species has to enter a host nest, be accepted by the host workers, then kill and replace the resident queen [19]" The citation (19) is to: http://www.springerlink.com/content/cj1arl0gqb2amw7h/fulltext.pdf Which outlines clearly this behaviour. 137.111.13.200 (talk) 07:40, 4 July 2011 (UTC)