Watch Your Language! Racially Loaded Metaphors in Scientific Research

For 200 years, entomologists have used slavery as a metaphor for the behavior of some highly specialized insects. The “slave-making ants” are obligate social parasites that exploit the work forces of their hosts, another ant species. Scouts find colonies of their host species and then recruit nestmates to raid the colonies for their hosts' larvae and pupae. The raiders return with their booty and rear them to adulthood; when the allospecific pupae emerge as adult ants, they behave as they would in their natal nests, and start caring for the brood pile, cleaning the nest, and the like. The social parasites themselves are unable to perform typical ant chores like foraging, and thus are completely dependent on the work performed by their captives. The captives do not reproduce, causing the parasites to repeatedly raid host colonies to replenish their work force. This syndrome, christened dulosis (from doulos, the Greek word for slave), is among the most remarkable behaviors known in the animal kingdom. Recent work on these fascinating insects has positioned them as important systems for studying nestmate recognition and the geographic mosaic of coevolution. As a result, they are attracting attention from the popular press as well.