Download Slave Maker 3 25 5
Asela Buchheit
Slave-making ants are brood parasites which have evolved the ingenious trick of capturing and enslaving the workers of other ant species, putting them to work in their own nests raising their pupae. In many cases the slave-maker workers themselves have become completely unable to perform essential tasks on the colony such as foraging, nest maintainance and caring for their young. They have instead become specialised at searching for and attacking the nests of host colonies in slave raids during which all adult ants are killed or expelled. The slave-makers then rob the larvae of their host, taking it back to their own colony where they will develop into slave workers in the slave-maker nest.
Attacks by slave-maker ants are frequent and destructive and so impose a high cost on their hosts. This has led to the evolution of defence mechanisms in the host species which help it to resist enslavement, these include enemy recognition, fighting abilities and rapid escape from the besieged nest. All of these defences are useful before enslavement however, it has long been thought that defense behaviours that benefit the ants after enslavement could not evolve since enslaved workers cannot escape and, more importantly, cannot reproduce. Without a means of passing on their genes to a new generation it was thought that any new trait that arose in enslaved ants that helped them to fight back would die with those ants and be quickly lost.
This is the way that evolution normally works, new traits that are beneficial increase the reproductive success of the individuals possessing that trait and so, over time, it spreads through the population. Without reproduction a trait cannot usually spread. There is however another way. Animals can increase their own fitness by behaving in a way that increases the reproductive success of other animals with which they share a large proportion of the same genes. This is called inclusive fitness or kin selection and is in fact what worker ants do all the time. Worker ants are sterile but they can increase their own fitness by assisting the queen who carries a lot of the same genes that they do*.
Instead of raising the brood of their social parasite P. americanus to adulthood, enslaved Temnothorax were observed to kill a large proportion of the slave-maker pupae either by direct attack or by neglect
A startling difference was found in brood rearing success between the two groups. On average pupae in free-living T. longispinosus nests had a survival rate of 85% while for pupae in P. americanus nests, under the care of enslaved workers, this dropped sharply to only 45%.
The results of this study clearly show that enslaved T. longispinosus workers attack and kill the pupae of the slave-makers, but how could a trait like this evolve when it is only used by sterile workers trapped in the nest of another species? Evidence suggests that kin selection is the answer. Genetic analyses revealed that in the wild, ants in nearby T. longispinosus colonies were closely genetically related to the ants enslaved in P. americanus nests. Tobias Pamminger and his colleagues suggest that by actively killing or neglecting slave-maker pupae the enslaved workers are able to reduce the size of nearby slave-maker colonies and so lower the risk of slave raids on colonies of their own species in the same area.
Here we have an example of kin selection in action. Although enslaved ants cannot reproduce and cannot directly benefit from killing the pupae of slave maker ants, they can benefit indirectly by reducing the impact of the slave-makers on nearby nests whose members carry the same genes that they do. This is they key point, natural selection acts on genes, not individuals. By behaving in a way they benefits copies of their genes in the bodies of free-living ants, enslaved ants were able to increase their own fitness and the slave rebellion trait was able to evolve.
Slave-maker ants (Formica sanguinea) are playable as gene-thief ant units in extra missions and free play. Slave-maker ant soldiers use basic attack by biting. Slave-maker ant stealers can't attack. They can ignore combat and move toward brood chambers to take larvae. The brood tiles with taken...
As short and precise as that statement is, it covers a lot of the needed change in Afrikan leadership models that I also believe can bring the much-needed development in Afrika. I will try and explain what I mean as I go on.
If truly you are my servant, why do I have to clear the road for you to pass with your noise-polluting sirens and bullying unruly security details who have no regard for your employers? Do you really know and understand what leadership means?
The political leadership of a nation cannot and will not take the place of family leadership, business leadership, spiritual leadership, investment leadership. The list is endless. So now that we are still pretty much where we have been in terms of sustainable development in Afrika, does it not show that we have more makers of slaves than we have servant leaders? We all in our little spaces and with our God-given purposes must learn to be builders of people and not users of people.
Samuel Phillips is a writer, graphic designer, photographer, songwriter, singer and a lover of God.As an Afrikan content creator, he is passionate about creating a better image and positive narrative about Afrika and Afrikans. He is a true Afrikan who believes that the true potential of Afrika and Afrikans can manifest through God and accurate collaborations between Afrikans. Afrika is the land of kings, emperors, original wisdom, ancient civilizations, great men and women and not some road-side-aid-begging poor third world continent that the world finds joy in undermining.
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among fishes, birds and insects, including some species of ants. Slave-making ants capture brood from other ant species to increase the worker force of their colony through regular, destructive raids that frequently finish with the killing of many workers and the queen of the attacked nest. As a consequence, few colonies survive a slave-maker raid. After emerging in the slave-maker nest, slave workers work as if they were in their own colony, assuming most tasks in their new nest while parasite workers only concentrate on replenishing the labor force from neighboring host nests. The slave-makers may either be permanent social parasites (thus depending on enslaved ants throughout their whole lives) or facultative slave-makers, that use slaves as a temporal advantage. The behavior is unusual among ants but has evolved several times independently. Most slave-raiders capture only brood, but a few species also enslave adult workers. There are sometimes slave-maker nests with two species of slaves. For example, the slave-maker P americanus can have slaves of T. longispinosus and T curvispinosus at the same time.
Slave raids are preceded by a scouting event during which a single slave-maker worker discovers and inspects a host nest and returns to its colony to recruit nest mates and prepare the raid. On their hand, nests under the risk of an attack have different strategies to avoid it or to survive. One is to watch for scout ants from the slavemaking species and kill them (search and destroy!) before they can inform to their mates that a possible host nest is available. The second strategy is to fight and frequently hosts defend fiercely their brood and their nest in deadly battles. A third possible defense system is to flight, abandon the nest site, save a fraction of the brood and the queen, and look for a new start in a different place.
The last stratagem is named chemical insignificance and is a rare strategy where the parasite lacks recognition cues on its cuticle. Host ants facing these chemically invisible parasites will not recognize them as foreigners and unintentionally integrate them into their colony. It is rare because those hydrocarbons involved in recognition also function as desiccation barriers and thus these ants risk to die from dehydration. The advantage is that hosts will not recognize the chemically invisible parasites and will integrate them into their colony where they can get as much brood as they want.
Peaceful raids: Neither the slave-maker, not its two hosts show aggression. The slave-maker ants steal the host brood unmolested and, besides, they carry the adult host workers into their own nest and integrate them into its slave workforce.
Escalated raids: The slave-maker ants switch their behavior and sting most adult hosts to death. Presumably, the escalated raid is a peaceful raid that went wrong, maybe because the host ants recognized and attacked the social parasite, which will be counteracted by a killing spree from the invaders. The first option is clearly better since in the escalated raids, the slave-maker group loses some ants and they cannot exploit adult hosts as slaves. In fact, results are much worse, integrating a tenth of the hosts integrated during a peaceful raid (including brood and adult workers).
Scientists from the University of Mainz and the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Goerlitz recently described a new slave-making ant species from the eastern USA. They baptized the new ant Temnothorax pilagens since it pillages other ant colonies.
In contrast to the famous slave-hunting Amazon ants whose campaigns may include up to 3,000 warriors, this newly discovered slave-maker is minimalistic in expense, but most effective in result. These tiny ants are only 2.5 millimeters long, and their range is only a few square meters of forest floor.
The victims of their raiding parties are societies of two related ant species that live in hollow nuts or acorns. The ants are usually well protected inside the nuts, which have thick walls and a single entrance hole of only 1 millimeter in diameter, so they cannot be entered by larger enemy ants.
An average raiding party of the pillage ant contains just four slave-hunters, including the scout which discovers the targets. Due to their small size, the raiders easily penetrate the slave species nut homes.
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