Animalia > Arthropoda > Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae > Polyergus

Polyergus (Rocky Mountain ant)

Wikipedia Abstract

Polyergus, also called Amazon ants, is a small genus of 14 described species of "slave-raiding" ants. Its workers are incapable of caring for brood, in part due to their dagger-like, piercing mandibles, but more importantly, because in the evolution of their parasitism on certain species of the host genus "Formica", they have lost the "behavioral wiring" to carry out even rudimentary brood care, or even to feed themselves. Polyergus workers exist in essence as a specialized brood-acquiring caste in their mixed Polyergus/Formica colonies, maintaining the Formica worker force by robbing brood, especially pupae, of particular species in the closely related genus Formica in massive colony-to-colony raids. The captured ants are generally referred to as "slaves" in scientific and popular literat
View Wikipedia Record: Polyergus

Species

Polyergus bicolor
Polyergus breviceps (Rocky Mountain ant) (Vulnerable)
Polyergus longicornis (Long-horned Amazon ant)
Polyergus lucidus (Rocky Mountain ant) (Vulnerable)
Polyergus mexicanus (Western Amazon ant)
Polyergus montivagus (Foothills Amazon ant)
Polyergus nigerrimus (Ant) (Vulnerable)
Polyergus oligergus (Florida Amazon ant)
Polyergus ruber (Ruby amazon ant)
Polyergus rufescens
Polyergus samurai (Ant) (Vulnerable)
Polyergus sanwaldi (Sanwald's Amazon ant)
Polyergus texana (Texas Leaf Cutting Ant)
Polyergus topoffi (Topoff's Amazon ant)
Polyergus vinosus

External References

Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0