Formica sanguinea
| Formica sanguinea | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Hymenoptera |
| Family: | Formicidae |
| Genus: | Formica |
| Species: | F. sanguinea |
| Binomial name | |
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Formica sanguinea Latreille, 1798 |
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Formica sanguinea, or blood-red ant, is a species of slave-maker ant in the genus Formica characterized by the ability to secrete formic acid. These ants It ranges from Central and Northern Europe through Russia to Japan, China, the Korean Peninsula, Africa and also the United States. This species is coloured red and black with workers up to 7 mm long.
A colony of F. sanguinea can live either as a free colony or as a social parasite of Formica species, most commonly Formica fusca and Formica rufibarbis.
F. sanguinea, are facilitative slave-makers, meaning colonies can live either alone or be parasitic. This allows them to be a good model organism to study the origins of ant slave-making. A fertilized F. sanguinea queen will enter the nest of the host ant species and kill their queen. She then takes advantage of the workers who tend to her and her brood. F. sanguinea workers will also raid nearby nests, stealing larvae and pupae to become future workers for F. sanguinea. The raids are also not exclusively for acquiring slave workers but are sometimes predation events.
F. sanguinea has not been observed to have division of labor in which certain individuals raid or forage. This excludes them from the eusocial groups of Hymenoptera. However, some individuals possess more Dufour's gland compounds than others, which presumably would be more successful in slave raids.
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Wikipedia