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found outside the nest dish, running along the sides of the arena, 
apparently attempting to escape. Only one queen was consistently 
found within the nest dish and tended by slaves. She was darker 
than the others and was assumed to be the founding queen. Other 
queens, both alate and dealate, were observed being attacked by 
slaves. All the dealates and most of the alates died within two 
months. However the corpse of the putative founding queen was 
retained in the nest dish for several days after death while the bodies 
of the other four were all found far removed from the nest. These 
observations suggest that it is unlikely that female reproductives are 
able to spend their first winter in their home colony. 
Two matings of labelled alates from Colony X were observed. 
Both occurred within one meter of the nest entrance and took place 
with the queens clinging to blades of grass. The first occurred with a 
male from the same colony while the second occurred with a male, 
from a Polyergus colony using the same slave species, who had been 
introduced by the experimenters. 
The adoption results indicate that at least one constraint exists on 
the interaction of Polyergus lucidus and potential slave species. The 
slave species found in a queen’s nest of origin appears to determine 
the host species she will successfully invade, although the exact 
mechanism through which this occurs is unknown. Jaisson (1975) 
has demonstrated that callows imprint to brood, of their own or 
different species, present during a critical period following eclosion. 
Possibly the queens imprint to the host species they encounter upon 
eclosing. Other potential constraints to be explored include the pos- 
sibility that the raiders’ choice of species to raid, and a queen’s 
choice of males, may be similarly determined by the slave species in 
their colony of origin. 
Acknowledgements 
This research was supported by a grant from the Theodore 
Roosevelt Memorial Fund of the American Museum of Natural 
History and NSF grant #BSN-840204 1 . We thank Stefan Cover and 
Howard Topoff for their comments on the original manuscript, and 
Anton Allen, Steven Siega, Alexander Singleton, and Phillip Yang 
for their assistance in the field. 
