Social parasites exploit the socially managed resources of their host's society. Inquiline social parasites are dependent on their host throughout their life cycle, and so many of the traits inherited from their free-living ancestor are removed by natural selection. One trait that is commonly lost is the worker caste, the functions of which are adequately fulfilled by host workers. The few inqu...

Acanthocrios furnarii (Cordero & Vogelsang, 1928) [Hemiptera: Cimicidae: Haematosiphoninae] is an ectoparasite on avian hosts from Argentina and Uruguay. It has been mostly found in mud nests of Furnarius rufus (Gmelin, 1788) [Aves: Furnariidae], but its true hosts are some of the inquiline birds that use F. rufus nests. These inquiline hosts belong to the families Emberizidae, Hirundinidae, Ic...

At least two species of aphid, Tamalia coweni and Tamalia dicksoni (Hemiptera: Aphididae) induce galls on the leaves of Arctostaphylos spp. shrubs (Ericaceae). These galls are frequently inhabited by at least one species of congeneric inquiline. The inquiline clade has branched off from the gall-inducing clade and appears to be radiating rapidly on different host-plants, in contrast to the gall...

Inquiline social parasitic ant species exploit colonies of other ant species mainly by producing sexual offspring that are raised by the host. Ant social parasites and their hosts are often close relatives (Emery's rule), and two main hypotheses compete to explain the parasites' evolutionary origins: (1) the interspecific hypothesis proposes an allopatric speciation scenario for the parasite, w...

Obligate social parasites, or inquilines, exploit the colonies of free-living social species and evolved at least 80 times in ants alone. Most species of the highly specialized inquiline social parasites are rare, only known from one or very few, geographically isolated populations, and the sexual offspring of most inquiline species mates inside the maternal colony. Therefore, inquiline populat...

A quantitative catalogue of the parasitoids (almost exclusively Chalcidoidea) and inquiline Cynipidae recorded in the western Palaearctic from galls induced on Quercus by Cynipidae (Cynipini) is presented. Quantitative and national data are included with bibliographic references to almost all records published in 2011 and earlier. The catalogue is followed by two checklists, firstly one of the ...

I report the Þrst example of communal parasitism in galling aphids and quantify the effects of gall invasion by the inquiline aphid Tamalia inquilina Miller on its host, Tamalia coweni (Cockerell). On populations of the host plants Arctostaphylos spp., both T. coweni and T. inquilina exhibited facultatively communal behavior and co-occupied galls with no apparent agonistic interactions. Althoug...

Ant inquilines are obligate social parasites, usually lacking a sterile worker caste, which are dependent on their hosts for survival and reproduction. Social parasites are rare among the fungus-gardening ants (Myrmicinae: tribe Attini) and only four species are known until now, all being inquilines from the Higher Attini. We describe Mycocepurus castrator sp.n., the first inquiline social para...

Abstract Queens of the inquiline social parasite Acromyrmex insinuator are known to infiltrate mature colonies echinatior and exploit host’s perennial workforce by producing predominantly reproductive individuals while suppressing host reproduction. Here we report three cases an A. queen having joined incipient colony that contained only founding host-queen her small symbiotic fungus garden. We...