Dulosis

Dulosis is the presence of permanent parasitism with slavery.

The biology of Temnothorax muellerianus provides a representative account of dulosis.

Slave-making ants show wide variation in the degree of degeneracy of the worker caste. At one end of the spectrum, represented by Formica sanguinea, the workers are self-sufficient. They conduct all of the custodian tasks of the colony on their own, and they can easily survive without the support of slaves. At the other extreme, represented by the degenerate slavemakers, workers have a very limited behavioral repertory and are apparently completely helpless without their slaves (Holldobler & Wilson, 1990).