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Psyche 
[Vol. 92 
Table 1. Summary of labelling, recovery, and adoption of 
Polvergus queens. 
COLONY 
OF ORIGIN 
II 
IV 
V 
X 
TOTAL 
Host 
species* 
FN 
FS 
FS 
FS 
Labelled 
21 
12 
26 
61 
120 
Recovered 
12 
1 
5 
16 
34 
Laboratory 
adoptions 
1 
1 
1 
11 
14 
*FN - Formica pallidelfulva nitidiventris 
FS - Formica schaufussi 
adult workers of both slave species present is aggression or with- 
drawal. For a queen to succeed in becoming adopted, she must 
persist in her attempts to contact the workers and become accepta- 
ble over time. Laboratory interactions between individual conspe- 
cific slave species workers from different colonies usually result in 
the death of one or both workers, and the introduction of an alien 
conspecific into a slave species nest always results in the death of the 
newcomer. These findings suggest that a queen’s association, in her 
home nest, with slave species workers of the same species as a poten- 
tial host, probably does not give her any useful identifiable odor to 
diminish the initial aggression of this host. 
The observation of large numbers of dealates returning to their 
home nest is consistent with findings of Marlin (1968). In the two 
recoveries of dealates found in the nest entrances of their original 
nest, queens were being attacked by resident slaves. We excavated a 
large colony of Polyergus in late August, 1984, and found five deal- 
ate and numerous alate queens. Since polygyny is not characteristic 
of Polyergus , and since mating flights had been occurring, we 
assumed that at least four of these had recently mated and returned 
to the nest. In the laboratory, the colony was divided into five parts. 
Each part contained one of the dealate queens and a mixture of 
slaves and raiders, and was placed in a plastic petri dish nest within 
a plastic arena with a sand floor. Four of the queens were usually 
