HOST SPECIFICITY IN COLONY-FOUNDING 
BY POLYERG US LUCID US QUEENS 
(HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE) 
By Linda Goodloe 1 and Raymond Sanwald 2 
Introduction 
The pine barrens of eastern Long Island in Suffolk County, New 
York, provide a unique habitat for the obligatory slave-making spe- 
cies Polyergus lucidus Mayr. Here, four species of Formica , belong- 
ing to the pallidefulva species group, are used by Polyergus as 
slaves, although only one slave species is usually found in a single 
Polyergus nest. This is in contrast to related facultative slave- 
makers of the genus Formica belonging to the sanguinea species 
group, found in the same habitat, whose nests commonly contain 
two or more species serving as slaves. Choice of a host species can 
occur both through the colony-founding behavior of queens and 
through the choice of target nests for slave raids. The parasitic 
Polyergus queens found colonies either by adoption, where a queen 
invades the nest of a slave species, killing the resident queen and 
appropriating workers and brood present (Wheeler, 1910), or by 
“budding”, in which a queen invades or is accepted into a host 
species nest accompanied by workers from her nest of origin (Mar- 
lin, 1968). 
This experiment reports the results of a study designed to deter- 
mine whether the choice of host species by a parasitic queen is 
influenced by her past experience. It was hypothesized that a newly- 
mated Polyergus queen would choose and/or be chosen by a colony 
of the same host species found in her nest of origin. 
Method 
The site for the experiment was a two acre lot in Suffolk County, 
N.Y., on which vegetation is kept closely cropped and where an 
unusually high density of colonies of potential slave species of 
'Psychology Department, Hunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park 
Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021 
2 212 Mt. Vernon Ave., Medford, N.Y. 1 1763 
Manuscript received by the editor April 6, 1985 
297 
