Vollenhovia nipponica

This species is an inquiline. Queens live in the nest of a different ant species, have no workers and are entirely dependent on their hosts for food. The queens produce eggs that are cared for and raised to maturity by the host workers.

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Nearctic Region: United States. Palaearctic Region: Japan.

Genetics
The genome of P. nipponica was sequenced for a study examining how this and other parasitic ants with no worker caste may have altered their genome to arrive at a workerless state. In comparison to ants with a full complement of castes, there appeared to be no loss of genes in the parasitic ants. This suggests regulatory differences and not sequence differences predominate in gains and losses of castes (phenotypes). (Smith et al. 2015)

Nomenclature

 *  nipponica. Vollenhovia nipponica Kinomura & Yamauchi, 1992: 203, figs. 1, 2 (q.m.) JAPAN.