Polyergus lucidus - a Complex Ant Struggle

Описание: August 2024 - I haven't seen this species in my area near Rockford, IL before. I was impressed by the level of variability between the major and minor workers. If I didn't know better, I'd say this looks like a slaver ant situation, but I'm not aware of any slaver ants in my area. I need to do more reading!

EDIT: I found out it was Polyergus lucidus! This is a slave-making ant that lives in my area . In the video, they are in the process of taking the pupae of another nearby species' colony and bringing them to their nest, where they will hatch them not eat them! These workers then go on to work in the lucidus colony as though they were workers of that species - which the lucidus needs, because they have no minor workers of their own! That explains so much about what we're looking at here!

Additional note: the enslaved colony looks to be only weakly resisting. It seems like there's probably some chemical warfare going on here: they may be responding to pheromones telling them that the polyergus is friendly. So they are alarmed and on edge because they know they're under attack, but they can't figure out who is attacking them! Aside from a few brief wrestling matches, they mostly just stand around the opening of their colony, alert but unable to truly understand what is happening to them. Their colony may survive this raid, but if too many young are carried off, they will likely perish. Eventually, the lucidus queen may even come and take it over herself, killing the resident queen in the process.