Parasitic ants have developed a method to take over colonies with rulers too strong to defeat by direct attack. They use a ...

Some ants kill the queens of another species and take over their colonies, but we now know at least one species gets workers ...

Lasius orientalis and Lasius umbratus—invade and overtake a host ant colony. In both cases, the parasitic ant queen invades the nest and sprays the host colony queen with what is likely formic acid.

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide.