Queens of the inquiline social parasite Acromyrmex insinuator are known to infiltrate mature colonies of Acromyrmex echinatior and to exploit the host’s perennial workforce by producing predominantly reproductive individuals while suppressing host reproduction. Here we report three cases of an A. insinuator queen having joined an incipient colony of A. echinatior that contained only the founding host-queen and her small symbiotic fungus garden. We conjectured that 1:1 host-inquiline co-founding—a phenomenon that has only rarely been reported in ants—may imply that the presence of an A. insinuator queen may incur benefits to the host by increasing survival of its incipient colonies. We observed that the parasite queens neither foraged nor defended the nest against intruders. However, the parasite queens interacted with the host and fungus in a way that could be consistent with grooming and/or with contributing eggs. These observations may help explain why A. insinuator queens have maintained metapleural glands, even though they are smaller than those of host queens, and why A. insinuator has lost the large foraging worker caste but not the small worker caste.

众所周知，inquiline 社会寄生虫Acromyrmex insinuator 的皇后会渗入Acromyrmex echinatior 的成熟群体，并通过生产主要繁殖的个体同时抑制宿主繁殖来利用宿主的多年生劳动力。在这里，我们报告三种例临床的A. insinuator女王已经加入了一个初期的殖民地A. echinatior仅包含建国主机女王和她的小共生真菌花园。我们推测，1:1 的宿主-inquiline 共同创建——一种在蚂蚁中很少报道的现象——可能意味着A. inquiline 的存在蜂王可以通过增加其初始群体的存活率来为宿主带来好处。我们观察到寄生蜂王既不觅食也不保护巢穴免受入侵者的侵害。然而，寄生蜂王与宿主和真菌的相互作用可能与梳理和/或贡献卵的方式一致。这些观察结果可能有助于解释为什么A. insinuator 皇后保持后胸膜腺，即使它们比寄主皇后的要小，以及为什么A. ininuator失去了大型觅食工种而不是小型工种。