ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the available literature on multiple queens in ant nests either at the founding stage or later in colony development. It addresses some of the selective forces behind pleometrosis and their effect on the behavior of co-founding queens. The effect of this minimum is to generate a conservative estimate of polygyny among ants since notes regarding single observations of unclear significance and observations of species that have very large colonies but are nonetheless polygynous tend to be excluded. An alternative to queen aggression and death at the end of claustrality is the establishment of distinct worker forces and territories by initial co-foundresses within a single nest, that is, "oligogyny". B. olldobler and E. O. Wilson emphasize the coincidence between such "secondary polygyny" and unicolonial ant species, that is, those in which a single colony occupies many nests and, ultimately, the entire available habitat.
