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Significance Identifying the conditions associated with a life history transition from cooperative colony life to exploitative social parasitism is important for understanding how changes in behavior contribute to speciation. To explore the evolutionary origins of social parasitism, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of Formica ants because half of all species are social parasites and all socially parasitic life history syndromes known from eusocial insects are represented in this genus.
Obligately socially parasitic ants are social parasites that typically lack the sterile worker caste, and depend on the host species for survival and brood care. The genus Nylanderia has over 130 described species and subspecies, none of which, until this study, were known social parasites.
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