Manual annotations and sequence files of olfactory and gustatory receptors in eight species of ants (slave-making ants, hosts and non-host species) spanning 3 independent origins of slave-making. These manual annotations were investigated for patterns of convergent gain or loss in slave-making ants compared to their hosts and vice versa. We highlighted extensive losses of chemoreceptors in slave-making ants compared to hosts, indicating a loss in perception accompanying the transition to social parasitism, with some degree of convergent molecular evolution at the level of individual genes. For the full study, see doi:10.1093/molbev/msab305