In zoology, an inquiline is an animal that lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species. For example, some organisms such as insects may live in the homes of gophers and feed on debris, fungi, roots, etc. The most ubiquitous types of inquiline are those found in association with the nests of social insects, especially ants and termites — a single colony may support dozens of different inquiline species. In this case, an inquiline is a social parasite that makes use of its host colony to produce sexual offspring. A virgin queen of the inquiline species intrudes the host nest, without being noticed. This is a complicated mechanism, that is not well understood. It involves hormones and the acquisition of the colony odour, consisting of a colony-specific hydrocarbon profile. Once the inquiline is established in the host nest, it manipulates the original queen, which stays alive (this is unique to inquilinism, and is not the case in other cases of social parasitisnm, e.g. slavery in Formica ants) and produces workers. So the inquiline is not able to maintain its own colony, but uses another species to produce its own offspring, while the host colony produces wprkers and no offspring. Zoology (from Greek: ζῴον, zoion, animal; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals. ... For other uses, see Animal (disambiguation). ... Commensalism is a term employed in ecology to describe a relationship between two living organisms where one benefits and the other is not significantly harmed or helped. ... Divisions Chytridiomycota Zygomycota Ascomycota Basidiomycota The Fungi (singular: fungus) are a large group of organisms ranked as a kingdom within the Domain Eukaryota. ... For other uses, see Ant (disambiguation). ... Families Mastotermitidae Kalotermitidae Termopsidae Hodotermitidae Rhinotermitidae Serritermitidae Termitidae Wikispecies has information related to: Isoptera Termites, sometimes known as white ants, are a group of social insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera. ...

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